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ON DREAMS

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School

http://www.archive.org/details/ondreams1914freu

ON DREAMS

BY

PROF. DR. SIGM. FREUD

ONLY AUTHORISED ENGLISH TRANSLATION
BY

M. D. EDER

FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.A., M.D., LL.D.

MEDICAL MEMBER OF THE LOCAL GOVERNIMENT BOARD FOR SCOTLAND ;

LATE FERGUSON SCHOLAR IN PHILOSOPHY ; LATE EXAMINER IN

MENTAL PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN

CD

V

NEW YORK

REBMAN COMPANY

HERALD SQUARE BUILDING
141-145 WEST 36th STREET

JUL191915

BRA

A II rights reserved

CONTENTS

45
54

I. THE SCIENTIFIC AND POPULAR VIEWS OF

DREAMS CONTRASTED - - - I

II. DREAMS HAVE A MEANING ANALYSIS OF A

DREAM MANIFEST AND LATENT CONTENT

OF DREAMS - - - - 6

III. THE DREAM AS REALISATION OF UNFULFILLED

DESIRES INFANTILE TYPE OF DREAMS - 21

IV. THE DREAM-MECHANISM CONDENSATION

DRAMATISATION - - - "33
V. THE DREAM-MECHANISM CONTINUED DIS-
PLACEMENT TRANSVALUATION OF ALL

PSYCHICAL VALUES _ _ _

VI. THE DREAM-MECHANISM CONTINUED THE

EGO IN THE DREAM - - _

VII, THE DREAM-MECHANISM CONTINUED REGARD

FOR INTELLIGIBILITY - - - 68
VIII. RELATION OF DREAMS TO OTHER UNCONSCIOUS

MENTAL PROCESSES REPRESSION - 78

IX. THREE CLASSES OF DREAMS - - - 84

X. WHY THE DREAM DISGUISES THE DESIRES

THE CENSORSHIP - - - - 88

XI. THE DREAM THE GUARDIAN OF SLEEP - "92

XII. DREAM SYMBOLISM MYTHS AND FOLKLORE - lOO

XIII. ELEMENTS COMMON TO NORMAL AND AB-
NORMAL PSYCHOLOGY - - _ 107

111

INTRODUCTION

'' The interpretation of dreams/' says Pro-
fessor Freud in one place, '' is the royal
road to a knowledge of the part the uncon-
scious plays in the mental life."

Even standing alone this statement is
sufficiently striking; it is at once a theory
and a challenge. But it does not stand
alone. It comes at the end of many years
of research among every class of mental
diseases. It comes, therefore, with the
authentication of experience. It is not to
be lightly set aside ; it claims our study ; and
the study of it will not go unrewarded.
The short essay here translated by Dr. Eder
is but an introduction to the vast field
opened up by Professor Sigm. Freud and
his colleagues. Already the journals of
clinical psychology, normal or morbid, are
fuU of the discussions of Professor Freud's

vi ON DREAMS

methods and results. There is a '' Freud
School/' That alone is a proof that the
method is novel if not new. There are, of
course, violent opponents and critical stu-
dents. The opponents may provoke, but
it is to the critical students that Professor
Freud will prefer to speak. '' The con-
demnation,'' said Hegel, ''that a great man
lays upon the world is to force it to explain
him." Of a new method, either of research
or of treatment — and the Freud method is
both — the same may be said. It is certain
that, whatever our prejudice against details
may be, the theory of '' psycho-analysis "
and the treatment based upon it deserves,
if only as a mental exercise, our critical
consideration. But Professor Freud is not
alone in the world of morbid psychology.
Let me digress for a moment.

Over twenty years ago it was my special
business to study and criticise several text-
books on insanity. To the study of these
textbooks I came after many years of dis-
cipline in normal psychology and the related

ON DREAMS vü

sciences. When I came to insanity proper,
I found that practically not a single text-
book made any systematic effort to show
how the morbid symptoms we classified as
'' mental diseases '' had their roots in the
mental processes of the normal mind. In
his small book, *' Sanity and Insanity/'
Dr. Charles Mercier did make an effort to
lay out, as it were, the institutes of insanity,
the normal groundwork out of which the
insanities grew, the groups of ideas that
to-day serve to direct our conduct and
to-morrow lose their adjustment to any but
a specially adapted environment. In his
later works, particularly in '' Psychology,
Normal and Morbid,'' Dr. Mercier has fol-
lowed up the central ideas of the early study.
All the more recent textbooks in English
contain efforts in the same direction; but
with a few striking exceptions they are
studies rather of physical symptoms associ-
ated with mental processes than of morbid
psychology proper. It was not until there
came from across the Channel Dr. Pierre

viii ON DREAMS

Janet's carefully elaborated studies on
Hysteria that I realised what a wealth of
psychological material had remained hidden
in our asylums, in our nervous homes, even
in our ordinary hospitals, and in the multi-
tudes of strange cases that occur in private
practice. Janet, a pupil of the Charcot
School — Charcot, who made la Salpetriere
famous — pushed the minute analysis of
morbid mental states into regions practi-
cally hitherto untouched. He was not alone.
His colleague, Professor Raymond, and
others in France and Germany, all work
with the same main ideas. Janet's books
read like romances. His studies on Psycho-
logical Automatism, the Mental State of
Hystericals, Neuroses and Fixed Ideas, and
many others on the part played by the
unconscious, were such rich mines of fact
and suggestion that Professor William
James, in his *' Principles of Psychology,'*
said of them: ''All these facts taken to-
gether, form unquestionably the beginning
of an inquiry which is destined to throw a

ON DREAMS ix

new light into the very abysses of our
nature." Curiously, not in this country —
the country of great psychologists, Locke,
Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, Thomas Reid,
Dugald Stewart, Adam Smith, James Mill,
John Stuart Mill, Bain, Spencer, among the
dead, and whole schools of distinguished
psychologists among the living — not in this
country, but in America, was the value of
the new material seriously considered. Here
and there, within recent years, in this
country, Janet's elaborate studies have not
been fruitless ; but I could not readily name
any clinician in this country that has pro-
duced similar studies. It is to the conti-
nents of Europe and America, which in this
field are in intimate touch, that we must
go if we are to see the rich outgrowths of
morbid psychology. I do not say that the
work done by our English students of
insanity is not, of its kind, as great and as
important as any done in the world, but it
is none the less true that, -until a few years
ago, the methods of Janet, Raymond,

X ON DREAMS

Bernheim, Beaunis, not to speak of Moll,
Forel, and Oppenheim, were practically un-
studied here. In America it has been
entirely different. Even the names of the
men are now familiar in our English maga-
zines— Muensterberg, Morton Prince, Boris
Sidis, Ernest Jones, J. Mark Baldwin, not
to mention William James and Stanley
Hall. It looks as if every new idea un-
earthed in the Old World is put to the test
by someone in the new. Britain remains
curiously cold.

It would be interesting to ask the reason.
Is it our metaphysical training ? Is it the
failure of the philosophical schools to real-
ize the value of all this new raw material
of study ? Is it, perhaps, the fear that '' the
unity of consciousness *' may be endangered
by the study of Double Personality, Mul-
tiple Personality, Dissociation of Conscious-
ness, Dormant Complexes, Hysterias, Pho-
bias, Obsessions, Psychoneuroses, Fixed
Ideas, Hysterical Amnesias, Hypermnesias,
and the masses of other notions correlated.

ON DREAMS xi

roughly, under the term *' unconscious " ?
The suggestion of fear is not mere conjec-
ture. Many years ago a distinguished
student of philosophy, a pupil and friend
of Sir William Hamilton, indicated to me,
when I spoke to him of some recent work
on Double Personality, that he had diffi-
culty in placing the new work, feeling that,
in admitting the possibility of multiple
personality, he was sacrificing the primary
concept of philosophy, the unity of con-
sciousness. It did not perhaps occur to
him that, when two so-called *' persons ''
speak together, there are, in popular lan-
guage, '' two personalities '' — each, no
doubt, in a separate body, but each having
his own *' unity of consciousness."

If this be a fact, is there any greater diffi-
culty in explaining the other fact that two
persons may be, as James put it, under
the same hat ? The metaphysical diffi-
culty, if there be a difficulty, is neither
more nor less in the one case than in the
other. But it is needless to ask why a whole

xii ON DREAMS

field of study has been, relatively, neglected
in this country. For now we have begun
to make up leeway.

This translation by Dr. Eder is an intro-
duction to the latest phase of the study of
the unconscious. It brings us back to the
point I began with, the relation of the
normal to the morbid. Dreams are a part
of everyone's normal experience, yet they
are shown here to be of the same tissue,
of the same mental nature, as other phe-
nomena that are undoubtedly morbid.
Dreams therefore offer in the normal a
budding-point for the study of morbid
growths. And the study of dreams by
Freud came long after his studies of such
neuroses as the phobias, hysterias, and the
rest . To dreams he applied the same method
of investigation and treatment as to the
others, and he found that dreams offered an
unlimited field for the same kind of study.

Perhaps, before going further, I should
attempt to disarm criticism about the
term *' unconscious. '* We speak of subcon-

ON DREAMS xiii

sciousness, co-consciousness, unconscious
mind, unconscious cerebration; or what
other terms should we use ? Here it is
better to avoid discussion, for we are con-
cerned less with theory than with practice.
And in Freud's work, whether we accept
his theory or not, the practice is of primary
importance. He takes the view that no
conscious experience is entirely lost; what
seems to have vanished from the current
consciousness has really passed into a sub-
consciousness, where it lives on in an
organised form as real as if it were still
part of the conscious personality. This
view, with various modifications, is adopted
by many students of morbid psychology.
But there is another view. Muensterberg,
for instance, maintains that it is unneces-
sary to speak of '' subconsciousness,'' for
every fact can be explained in terms of
physiology. He would accept the term
'' co-conscious " or '' co-consciousness " ; but
in one chapter he ends the discussion by
saying: *' But whether we prefer the physio-

xiv ON DREAMS

logical account or insist on the co-conscious
phenomena, in either case is there any
chance for the subconscious to slip in ?
That a content of consciousness is to a high
degree dissociated, or that the idea of the
personality is split off, is certainly a symp-
tom of pathological disturbance, but it has
nothing to do with the constituting of two
different kinds of consciousness, or with
breaking the continuous sameness of con-
sciousness itself. The most exceptional and
most uncanny occurrences of the hospital
teach after all the same which our daily
experience ought to teach us: there is
no subconsciousness '* ('' Psychotherapy,''

P- 157)-

There are many refinements of distinction

that we could make here, and if any reader
is anxious to consider them, he will find
some of them in a small volume on " Sub-
conscious Phenomena,'' by Muensterberg,
Ribot, and others (Rebman, London).

Here it is not of primary importance to
come to any conclusion on the best term

ON DREAMS xv

to use or the complement theory of the
facts. The discussion is far from an end;
but the harvest of facts need not wait for
the end of the discussion.

Meanwhile, let it be said that Professor
Freud has been steeped in this whole sub-
ject from his student days. It is, however,
less important to discuss his theory than
to understand his method. The method is
called '' psycho-analysis.*' The name is
not inviting, and it might apply to any
form of mental analysis; but it is at least
consistently Greek in etymology, and has
taken on a technical meaning in the medical
schools. What is the method ?

Let it be granted that a person has under-
gone a strongly emotional experience — for
example, a sudden shock or fright. If the
person is highly nervous, the shock may
result in some degree of dissociation. This
may take the form of a loss of memory for
certain parts of the experience. Let it be
so. The ultimate result may be an un-
reasonable fear of some entirely harmless

xvi ON DREAMS

object or situation. The person is afraid
of a crowd, or afraid of a closed door, or has
an intense fear of some animal or person.
For this fear he can give no reason; he
cannot tell when it began nor why it per-
sists. He may more or less overcome it;
but he may not. All through his future life
he will go about with a helplessly unreason-
able fear of a closed door (claustrophobia)
or of a crowd (agoraphobia) . Minor varieties
of such an affection are to be found in every
person's experience. On investigation, how-
ever, the root of the fear can be discovered :
it is the product of the original emotional
shock. The intellectual details of the emo-
tional experience have completely vanished
from the memory, but the emotion remains,
and it is attached to some accidental object
or circumstance present in the original
experience. Thousands of illustrations
could be given. They are, unfortunately,
only too numerous. In this essay on the
Interpretation of Dreams the reader will
find many simple cases.

ON DREAMS xvii

If, now, the person so affected is placed
in a quiet room, if he is requested to con-
centrate his mind on the disturbing object
or idea associated with his fear, if he is
encouraged to observe passively the chance
ideas which float up to him when he thus
concentrates himself, if he utters, under the
direction of his medical attendant, every
such idea as it comes into his mind, there is
a strange result. These ideas, coming ap-
parently by chance from nowhere in par-
ticular, are, when carefully studied, found
to be linked up with some past experience,
dating, perhaps, from months or years
away. If each idea as it emerges is fol-
lowed up, if the other ideas dragged into
consciousness by it are carefully recorded,
it is found that sooner or later entirely
forgotten experiences come into clear con-
sciousness. There are many ways of help-
ing this process. One of the ways is this:
Let a series of words be arranged; let the
doctor speak one of them to the patient;
let the patient, in the shortest time possible

b

xviii ON DREAMS

to him, say right out whatever idea is
suggested to him by the word ; let the time
taken to make the response be recorded in
seconds and fractions of a second — a thing
easy enough to do with a stop-watch.
Then, when the responses to a long series
of words are all recorded, and the time each
response has taken, it is found that some
responses have taken much longer than
others. This prolongation of the response-
time is always found whenever the test
word has stirred up a memory associated
with emotion. By following up further the
ideas stirred by this word, more ideas of a
related kind are discovered, often to the
patient's surprise. Things long forgotten
come back to memory ; circumstances that
apparently had no relation to the present
consciousness are found to be linked in
sequence with it — emotions, unreasoning
fears, anxieties, that apparently had no
relation to any particular experience, are
found at last to be part and parcel of things
that happened long ago. Once the doctor

ON DREAMS xix

has his cue, he can range in many directions,
and probe the mind again and again, until
he reveals multitudes of suppressed memo-
ries, forgotten ideas, forgotten elements of
experience. He can even get back into
early childhood, which, to the patient him-
self, leaves many and many a blank area in
the memory. But always the doctor lights,
sooner or later, on some complex experience
in which the particular fear or anxiety
arose.

But now, if the case is a suitable one, a
still stranger thing happens. When the
forgotten experience has thus artfully been
brought into the full light of consciousness,
the patient finds himself satisfied with the
explanation, and loses his particular fear.
He can now go back over the whole history
of its genesis; he can link up the old ex-
perience to the new, and so he attains once
more satisfaction and peace of mind. Up
till now he could not be reasoned out of his
anxiety; he had always an answer for any
explanation; he had always a fresh foolish

XX ON DREAMS

reason for his fear. Now all this vanishes.
He finds his mind once more running
smoothly, and his '' phobia '' gone. The
unreasoning dread has been tracked back
to its lair, and its lair has been destroyed
in the process.

There are many other methods of achiev-
ing the same result; let this generalised
sketch suffice .

What now is the theory ? The theory is
that the mental experience or '' complex ''
had, for some reason and by some mechan-
ism, been submerged, or suppressed, or for-
gotten. Freud maintains that there is a
fundamental tendency in the mind to sup-
press every experience that is associated
with painful emotion. This doctrine is allied
to Bain's [' Law of Conservation '' — that
painful experiences depress the vitality and
tend to disappear, while pleasant experi-
ences exalt the vitality and tend to remain
in memory. At any rate, by some process
the painful experience disappears from con-
scious memory, but it does not cease to

ON DREAMS xxi

exist. It may lie dormant, or it may work
subconsciously, and throw up the emotional
bubbles that continue, without a known
reason, to excite the ordinary consciousness.
But the complex, though deep and partly
dormant, never gets beyond reach. By the
method of concentration, by the use of
'' free associations,'' by the following up of
all the clues offered by the ideas " fished
up,'' the submerged complex can, element
by element, be brought back. When once
it is brought back the patient is restored,
the dormant complexes once more resume
their place in the total current of his ex-
perience, and the mind flows at peace.

This is, roughly, the method of psycho-
analysis. It has been applied in various
types of neurosis — hysterias, obsessions, pho-
bias, etc. It has not always succeeded in
removing the morbid conditions, but it has
succeeded so often that it may legitimately
be regarded as a method of treatment. As
a matter of discovery it is arduous, and
demands the highest skill and invention if

xxu

ON DREAMS

it is to succeed. Incidentally it reveals
masses of unpleasant ideas, of painful ideas,
even of disgusting ideas; but, in the right
hands, it leads to the healing of the mind.

Macbeth. How does your patient, doctor ?
Doctor. Not so sick, my lord.

As she is troubled with thick-
coming fancies.
That keep her from her rest.
Macbeth. Cure her of that;

Canst thou not minister to a mind

diseas'd ;
Pluck from the memory a rooted

sorrow ;
Raze out the written troubles of the

brain ;
And, with some sweet oblivious

antidote,
Cleanse the stuff' d bosom of that

perilous stuff.
Which weighs upon the heart ?
Doctor. Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

And here, insensibly, we have passed into
the World of Dreams. The morbid and
the normal have come together. Dreams

ON DREAMS xxiii

are the awaking of dormant complexes;
they are transfigured experiences ; they come
into consciousness traiHng clouds of emo-
tion, and fill the dreamer's imagination with
mysterious images. It is here that the
method of psycho-analysis most fascinates
the student. It looks as if once more the
'' interpretation of dreams " had become a
reality. The results of psycho-analysis,
even when the method is applied with a
master hand and the details are interpreted
with a skill that comes only of a quick
imagination, are not entirely convincing;
but they are certainly such as to make more
and more observation desirable. In the
present short essay Professor Freud gives a
sketch of psycho-analysis as it is applied to
the interpretations of dreams. His ex-
amples, if they are enough to illustrate the
theory, are hardly enough to prove it, but
they are intended as an introduction to his
more elaborate studies ; and, hitherto, ob-
servers as they have increased in experi-
ence have gained in conviction. That the

xxiv ON DREAMS

method goes a long way to prove that
dreams are not a chaotic sport of the brain,
but are a manifestation of ordered mental
experience, is beyond doubt. It would be
eas}^ to show where the theory does not
cover facts, but it is equally easy to show
many facts that it does cover.

What, then, is the theory ? Briefly this,
that dreams are very largely the expres-
sions of unfulfilled desires. Where, as in
children, the waking experience and the
sleeping experience differ from each other
by very little, the dream, or sleeping experi-
ence, readily takes the form of the ungrati-
fied desires of the day. But as the mind
grows older the dream expression of a desire
gets more intricate. By-and-by it is too
intricate to be deciphered from direct
memory, and then there is a chance for the
method of psycho-analysis. What of the
dream is remembered gives the cue for the
analysis. Take a remembered element of a
dream, track it back and back by free
association or other method, and you will

ON DREAMS xxv

find that, at one or two removes, the
remembered element stirs up forgotten
elements, and ultimately brings coherence
out of incoherence.

This appears simple, but let the reader
study the dreams analysed in this essay,
and he will find himself stirred by a thou-
sand suggestions. For Professor Freud has
constructed empirical laws out of his masses
of material. The dream as it appears to
the dreamer he calls the manifest dream
ideas. But as these are too absurd to form
a coherent reality, he gives ground for
believing that they represent latent dream
ideas. The manifest dream is a mass of
symbols representing elements in the latent
dream ideas. How the latent dream ideas
generate the manifest dream is discovered
by psycho-analysis, the translation from
the latent to the manifest is the effect
of the dream work. The dream work
is the very core of the difficulty. It is
round this that Professor Freud's greatest
subtleties of method are focussed. He

xxvi ON DREAMS

shows that every dream is linked to some-
thing that occurs on the previous day,
some recent experience, but the experience
emerges in the dream as part of the current
panorama of the subjective hfe, and there
is no date to the beginning of the panorama
— it may go back to any point in the indi-
vidual's history, even into the preconscious
days of early infancy. The day's experi-
ence and the life's experience flow in a
single stream, and the images that appear
in dreams are but the symbols of all the
latent ideas of that experience. How, by
displacement of this element or that, com-
pound symbols are formed; how, by the
foreshortening of experience and the linking
of the past with the present in a single idea,
masses of old memories are clotted into a
single point ; how, in the freedom of the
dream world, where the tension of the
waking life is relaxed, where the exacting
stimulations of the day are reduced, where
the consciousness of duty to be done in the
highly organised conditions of social conduct

ON DREAMS xxvii

is lowered, where, in a word, the censor is
drowsy or asleep, where the dream symbols
shape themselves into dramatic scenes of
endless variety — these it is that Professor
Freud's theory endeavours to set forth.
Displacement, condensation, dramatisation
— these are the short names for these long
and complicated processes. In the course
of his expositions. Professor Freud uses
these processes almost as if they were
demons, and he admits frankly their figura-
tive character. But he pleads that they
represent real processes, and is ready to
accept better names when he finds them.
To trace back the dream images to a definite
meaning in experience is the aim of the
psycho-analysis of dreams. And the suc-
cesses in these must be tested by the facts.
Sometimes the results are highly per-
suasive, sometimes they look highly fanci-
ful, always they are full of suggestion and
keep close to realities.

The dream symbolism, in particular, it is
easy to criticise ; but, after all, dream symbol-

xxviii ON DREAMS

ism is a reality. The point to investigate
is, what dream images are legitimately con-
sidered symbolic and what not. One has
only to remember that every word spoken
or written is a symbol, and a symbol in
much the same sense as the symbolism of
dreams, for every written or spoken word
is a complicated series of motions that
express meanings. The dream images are
complicated series of images that express
meanings. The difficulty of symbolism is
no greater in the one case than in the other.
But the variety of dream symbols is so
immense that the difficulties of tracing their
meaning are enormous. It is here that
the method meets its greatest difficulties;
but, equally, it is here that it scores its
greatest triumphs. Spoken or written lan-
guage is a technically organised system of
symbols ; dream language is as yet a poorly
organised system of symbols. The method
of psycho-analysis aims at organising them.
Some test results are described in this essay;
multitudes of others are to be found in the

ON DREAMS xxix

literature that is flowing from the appHca-
tion of the psycho-analytic method. Time
alone will show how far the organisation of
dream symbols into a definite '' language
of dreams '' is, in any given society, actual
or possible. But the effort of organisation
has led Professor Freud to another fine fetch
of theory, for his dream symbolism suggests
many curious explanations for the mytholo-
gies of all ages and all countries. Myth
symbols, that seem to defy explanation,
he traces back to their roots in the ''un-
conscious '' of primitive man.

That the emotions of sex should play an
enormous part in the processes of analysis
is to be expected ; for the sex emotions are
among the deepest, if not the deepest, of
our nature, and colour every experience.
From their proximate beginning in infancy
— and Freud's theory here is of immense
significance — to their multiform derivatives
in adult life, the sex emotions exercise an
influence on every phase of development,
and, in one form or another, are themselves

XXX ON DREAMS

a normal index of the stages of develop-
ment. It is therefore reasonable to expect
that they should play a great part in the
formation of obsessions, of fixed ideas, of
perversions, of repressed complexes. In
every civilisation, as Freud indicates, the
sex emotions are the most difficult to con-
trol, and have demanded the greatest
amount of restraint.

Restraints lead to repressions, repressions
lead to dissociations, dissociations lead to
irregularities of action. When, therefore,
as in dreams, the restraints of the social day
are withdrawn, naturally the repressed
ideas tend to emerge once more. How
much these ideas account for in the hys-
terias, how much '' the shocks of despised
love '' affect even the normal life, needs no
emphasis, but Freud pushes his analysis
farther, and tracks the sex emotions, like
many other fundamental emotions, into a
thousand by-paths of ordinary experience.
But it would be foolishness to say that sex
emotions are everything in the ruins of the

ON DREAMS xxxi

'' Buried Temple/' Far from it. What is
true of the sex emotions is true of all other
emotions in their varying degrees, and
often what looks like predominant sex emo-
tions may turn out to be accidental rather
than causative, a concomitant symptom
rather than the initiatory centre of dis-
turbance. But these points are all contro-
versial. It is the object of Freud to put
them to the test. If his general theory be
true, the dream-world will more and more
become the revealer of our deepest and
oldest experience.

It would be easy to fill many pages with
illustrative items and relative criticisms,
but that is not the purpose of an intro-
duction. Here I am concerned simply to
recommend this essay to the careful study
of all those interested in the mental history
of the individual, and in the blotting out
from the mind of needless fears and
anxieties. And no one need hesitate to
enter on this study, whatever his meta-
physical theories may be. Even the '' unity

xxxii ON DREAMS

of consciousness '' will not suffer, for,
through his unending efforts to link the
experiences of the day with the whole ex-
perience of the individual life, Professor
Freud, by the union of buried consciousness,
restores to the mind a new unity of con-
sciousness.

Dr. Eder, whose studies in this field have
been long and varied, does well to present
to British readers this essay which serves
as an introduction to the more elaborate
studies of Freud and his school, and I am
glad to have the privilege of saying so.

W. LESLIE MACKENZIE.

I.

In what we may term '' prescientific days "
people were in no uncertainty about the
interpretation of dreams. When they were
recalled after awakening they were regarded
as either the friendly or hostile manifesta-
tion of some higher powers, demoniacal and
Divine. With the rise of scientific thought
the whole of this expressive mythology was
transferred to psychology; to-day there is
but a small minority among educated per-
sons who doubt that the dream is the
dreamer's own psychical act.

But since the downfall of the mythologi-
cal hypothesis an interpretation of the
dream has been wanting. The conditions
of its origin ; its relationship to our psychical
life when we are awake ; its independence of
disturbances which, during the state of
sleep, seem to compel notice ; its many pecu-

I

2 ON DREAMS

liarities repugnant to our waking thought ;
the incongruence between its images and
the feehngs they engender ; then the dream's
evanescence^ the way in which^ on awaken-
ing, our thoughts thrust it aside as some-
thing bizarre, and our reminiscences muti-
lating or rejecting it — all these and many
other problems have for many hundred
years demanded answers which up till now
could never have been satisfactory. Before
all there is the question as to the meaning
of the dream, a question which is in itself
double-sided. There is, firstly, the psychi-
cal significance of the dream, its position
with regard to the psychical processes, as
to a possible biological function; secondly,
has the dream a meaning — can sense be
made of each single dream as of other
mental syntheses ?

Three tendencies can be observed in the
estimation of dreams. Many philosophers
have given currency to one of these ten-
dencies, one which at the same time pre-
serves something of the dream's former

ON DREAMS 3

over-valuation. The foundation of dream
life is for them a peculiar state of psychical
activity, which they even celebrate as
elevation to some higher state. Schubert,
for instance, claims: ''The dream is the
liberation of the spirit from the pressure of
external nature, a detachment of the soul
from the fetters of matter.'' Not all go so
far as this, but many maintain that dreams
have their origin in real spiritual excita-
tions, and are the outward manifestations
of spiritual powers whose free movements
have been hampered during the day
C' Dream Phantasies,'' Schemer, Volkelt).
A large number of observers acknowledge
that dream life is capable of extraordinary
achievements — at any rate, in certain fields
("Memory").

In striking contradiction with this the
majority of medical writers hardly admit
that the dream is a psychical phenomenon
at all. According to them dreams are pro-
voked and initiated exclusively by stimuli
proceeding from the senses or the body,

4 ON DREAMS

which either reach the sleeper from without
or are accidental disturbances of his internal
organs. The dream has no greater claim
to meaning and importance than the sound
called forth by the ten fingers of a person
quite unacquainted with music running his
fingers over the keys of an instrument.
The dream is to be regarded, says Binz,
*' as a physical process always useless, fre-
quently morbid.'' All the peculiarities of
dream life are explicable as the incoherent
effort, due to some physiological stimulus,
of certain organs, or of the cortical elements
of a brain otherwise asleep.

But slightly affected by scientific opinion
and untroubled as to the origin of dreams,
the popular view holds firmly to the belief
that dreams really have got a meaning, in
some way they do foretell the future, whilst
the meaning can be unravelled in some way
or other from its oft bizarre and enigmatical
content. The reading of dreams consists in
replacing the events of the dream, so far as
remembered, by other events. This is done

ON DREAMS 5

either scene by scene^ according to some
rigid key J or the dream as a whole is replaced
by something else of which it was a symbol.
Serious-minded persons laugh at these
efforts — " Dreams are but sea-foam \"

IL

One day I discovered to my amazement
that the popular view grounded in super-
stition, and not the medical one, comes
nearer to the truth about dreams. I
arrived at new conclusions about dreams
by the use of a new method of psychological
investigation, one which had rendered me
good service in the investigation of phobias,
obsessions, illusions, and the like, and
which, under the name '' psycho-analysis,"
had found acceptance by a whole school of
investigators. The manifold analogies of
dream life with the most diverse conditions
of psychical disease in the waking state have
been rightly insisted upon by a number
of medical observers. It seemed, there-
fore, a priori^ hopeful to apply to the
interpretation of dreams methods of investi-
gation which had been tested in psycho-

6

ON DREAMS 7

pathological processes. Obsessions and
those peculiar sensations of haunting dread
remain as strange to normal consciousness
as do dreams to our waking consciousness;
their origin is as unknown to consciousness
as is that of dreams. It was practical ends
that impelled us, in these diseases, to
fathom their origin and formation. Ex-
perience had shown us that a cure and a
consequent mastery of the obsessing ideas
did result when once those thoughts, the
connecting links between the morbid ideas
and the rest of the psychical content, were
revealed which were heretofore veiled from
consciousness. The procedure I employed
for the interpretation of dreams thus arose
from psychotherapy.

This procedure is readily described, al-
though its practice demands instruction
and experience. Suppose the patient is
suffering from intense morbid dread. He
is requested to direct his attention to the
idea in question, without, however, as he
has so frequently done, meditating upon it.

8 ON DREAMS

Every impression about it, without any
exception, which occurs to him should be
imparted to the doctor. The statement
which will be perhaps then made, that he
cannot concentrate his attention upon any-
thing at all, is to be countered by assuring
him most positively that such a blank state
of mind is utterly impossible. As a matter
of fact, a great number of impressions will
soon occur, with which others will associate
themselves. These will be invariably ac-
companied by the expression of the obser-
ver's opinion that they have no meaning
or are unimportant. It will be at once
noticed that it is this self-criticism which
prevented the patient from imparting the
ideas, which had indeed already excluded
them from consciousness. If the patient
can be induced to abandon this self-
criticism and to pursue the trains of thought
which are yielded by concentrating the
attention, most significant matter will be
obtained, matter which will be presently
seen to be clearly linked to the morbid idea

ON DREAMS 9

in question. Its connection with other -
ideas will be manifest, and later on will per-
mit the replacement of the morbid idea by
a fresh one, which is perfectly adapted to
psychical continuity.

This is not the place to examine thor-
oughly the hypothesis upon which this
experiment rests, or the deductions which
follow from its invariable success. It must
suffice to state that we obtain matter
enough for the resolution of every morbid
idea if we especially direct our attention to
the unhidden associations which disturb our
thoughts — those which are otherwise put
aside by the critic as worthless refuse. If
the procedure is exercised on oneself, the
best plan of helping the experiment is to
write down at once all one's first indistinct
fancies.

I will now point out where this method
leads when I apply it to the examination of
dreams. Any dream could be made use
of in this way. From certain motives I,
however^ choose a dream of my own, which

10 ON DREAMS

appears confused and meaningless to my
memory, and one which has the advantage
of brevity. Probably my dream of last
night satisfies the requirements. Its con-
tent, fixed immediately after awakening,
runs as follows:

'* Company ; at table or table d'hote. . . .
Spinach is served. Mrs. E. L., sitting next
to me, gives me her undivided attention, and
places her hand familiarly upon my knee.
In defence I remove her hand. Then she
says : ' But you have always had such beauti-
ful eyes.' ... / then distinctly see something
like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of
a spectacle lens. . . ."

This is the whole dream, or, at all events,
all that I can remember. It appears to
me not only obscure and meaningless, but
more especially odd. Mrs. E. L. is a person
with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms,
nor to my knowledge have I ever desired
any more cordial relationship. I have not
seen her for a long time, and do not think
there was any mention of her recently. No

ON DREAMS ii

emotion whatever accompanied the dream
process.

Reflecting upon this dream does not make
it a bit clearer to my mind. I will now,
however, present the ideas, without pre-
meditation and without criticism, which
introspection yielded. I soon notice that
it is an advantage to break up the dream
into its elements, and to search out the
ideas which link themselves to each frag-
ment.

Company ; at table or table d'hote. The
recollection of the slight event with which
the evening of yesterday ended is at once
called up. I left a small party in the
company of a friend, who offered to drive
me home in his cab. '^ I prefer a taxi,'' he
said ; '' that gives one such a pleasant
occupation; there is always something to
look at.'' When we were in the cab, and the
cab-driver turned the disc so that the first
sixty hellers were visible, I continued the
jest. '' We have hardly got in and we
already owe sixty hellers. The taxi always

12 ON DREAMS

reminds me of the table d'hote. It makes
me avaricious and selfish by continuously
reminding me of my debt. It seems to me
to mount up too quickly, and I am always
afraid that I shall be at a disadvantage,
just as I cannot resist at table d'hote the
comical fear that I am getting too little,
that I must look after myself.'' In far-
fetched connection with this I quote :

" To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go."

Another idea about the table d'hote. A
few weeks ago I was very cross with my
dear wife at the dinner-table at a Tyrolese
health resort, because she was not suf-
ficiently reserved with some neighbours
with whom I wished to have absolutely
nothing to do. I begged her to occupy
herself rather with me than with the
strangers. That is just as if I had been at
a disadvantage at the table d'hote. The
contrast between the behaviour of my wife
at that table and that of Mrs. E. L. in

ON DREAMS 13

the dream now strikes me: ''Addresses
herself entirely to me."

Further, I now notice that the dream is
the reproduction of a little scene which
transpired between my wife and myself
when I was secretly courting her. The
caressing under cover of the tablecloth was
an answer to a wooer's passionate letter.
In the dream, however, my wife is replaced
by the unfamiliar E. L.

Mrs. E. L. is the daughter of a man to
whom I owed money I I cannot help notic-
ing that here there is revealed an unsus-
pected connection between the dream con-
tent and my thoughts. If the chain of
associations be followed up which proceeds
from one element of the dream one is soon
led back to another of its elements. The
thoughts evoked by the dream stir up
associations which were not noticeable in
the dream itself.

Is it not customary, when someone ex-
pects others to look after his interests with-
out any advantage to themselves, to ask

14 ON DREAMS

the innocent question satirically: *' Do you
think this will be done for the sake of your
beautiful eyes ?" Hence Mrs. E. L/s speech
in the dream. " You have always had
such beautiful eyes/' means nothing but
'^ people always do everything to you for
love of you; you have had everything for
nothing.'' The contrary is, of course, the
truth ; I have always paid dearly for what-
ever kindness others have shown me. Still,
the fact that / had a ride for nothing yester-
day when my friend drove me home in his
cab must have made an impression upon me.

In any case, the friend whose guests we
were yesterday has often made me his
debtor. Recently I allowed an opportunity
of requiting him to go by. He has had only
one present from me, an antique shawl,
upon which eyes are painted all round, a
so-called Occhiale, as a charm against the
Malocchio. Moreover, he is an eye specialist.
That same evening I had asked him after a
patient whom I had sent to him for glasses.

As I remarked, nearly all parts of the

ON DREAMS 15

dream have been brought into this new
connection. I still might ask why in the
dream it was spinach that was served up.
Because spinach called up a little scene
which recently occurred at our table. A
child, whose beautiful eyes are really deserv-
ing of praise, refused to eat spinach. As a
child I was just the same; for a long time
I loathed spinach, until in later life my
tastes altered, and it became one of my
favourite dishes. The mention of this dish
brings my own childhood and that of my
child's near together. '' You should be
glad that you have some spinach,'' his
mother had said to the little gourmet.
" Some children would be very glad to get
spinach." Thus I am reminded of the
parents' duties towards their children.
Goethe's words —

" To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us.
To guilt ye let us heedless go" —

take on another meaning in this connection.
Here I will stop in order that I may

i6 ON DREAMS

recapitulate the results of the analysis of
the dream. By following the associations
which were linked to the single elements of
the dream torn from their context, I have
been led to a series of thoughts and reminis-
cences where I am bound to recognise
interesting expressions of my psychical life.
The matter yielded by an analysis of the
dream stands in intimate relationship with
the dream content, but this relationship is
so special that I should never have been
able to have inferred the new discoveries
directly from the dream itself. The dream
was passionless, disconnected, and un-
intelligible. During the time that I am
unfolding the thoughts at the back of the
dream I feel intense and well-grounded
emotions. The thoughts themselves fit
beautifully together into chains logically
bound together with certain central ideas
which ever repeat themselves. Such ideas
not represented in the dream itself are in
this instance the antitheses selfish, unselfish,
to he indebted, to work for nothing. I could

ON DREAMS 17

draw closer the threads of the web which
analysis has disclosed, and would then be
able to show how they all run together into
a single knot; I am debarred from making
this work public by considerations of a
private, not of a scientific, nature. After
having cleared up many things which I do
not willingly acknowledge as mine, I should
have much to reveal which had better
remain my secret. Why, then, do not I
choose another dream whose analysis would
be more suitable for publication, so that I
could awaken a fairer conviction of the
sense and cohesion of the results disclosed
by analysis ? The answer is, because every
dream which I investigate leads to the
same difficulties and places me under the
same need of discretion; nor should I forgo
this difficulty any the more were I to analyse
the dream of someone else. That could
only be done when opportunity allowed all
concealment to be dropped without injury
to those who trusted me.
The conclusion which is now forced upon

i8 ON DREAMS

me is that the dream is a sort of substitution
for those emotional and intellectual trains
of thought which I attained after complete
analysis. I do not yet know the process by
which the dream arose from those thoughts^
but I perceive that it is wrong to regard the
dream as psychically unimportant, a purely
physical process which has arisen from the
activity of isolated cortical elements awak-
ened out of sleep.

I must further remark that the dream is
far shorter than the thoughts which I hold it
replaces ; whilst analysis discovered that the
dream was provoked by an unimportant
occurrence the evening before the dream.

Naturally, I would not draw such far-
reaching conclusions if only one analysis
were known to me. Experience has «^^hown
me that when the associations of any dream
are honestly followed such a chain of
thought is revealed, the constituent parts of
the dream reappear correctly and sensibly
linked together; the slight suspicion that
this concatenation was merely an accident

ON DREAMS 19

of a single first observation must, therefore,
be absolutely relinquished. I regard it,
therefore, as my right to establish this new
view by a proper nomenclature. I con-
trast the dream which my memory evokes
with the dream and other added matter
revealed by analysis: the former I call the
dream's manifest content ; the latter, with-
out at first further subdivision, its latent
content. I arrive at two new problems
hitherto unformulated: (i) What is the
psychical process which has transformed the
latent content of the dream into its mani-
fest content ? (2) What is the motive or the
motives which have made such transfor-
mation exigent. The process by which the
change from latent to manifest content is
executed I name the dream-work. In con-
trast with this is the work of analysis, which
produces the reverse transformation. The
other problems of the dream — the inquiry
as to its stimuli, as to the source of its
materials, as to its possible purpose, the
function of dreaming, the forgetting of

20 ON DREAMS

dreams — these I will discuss in connection
with the latent dream-content.

I shall take every care to avoid a con-
fusion between the manifest and the latent
content, for I ascribe all the contradictory
as well as the incorrect accounts of dream-
life to the ignorance of this latent content,
now first laid bare through analysis.

III.

The conversion of the latent dream
thoughts into those manifest deserves our
close study as the first known example of
the transformation of psychical stuff from
one mode of expression into another. From
a mode of expression which, moreover, is
readily intelligible into another which we
can only penetrate by effort and with guid-
ance, although this new mode must be
equally reckoned as an effort of our own
psychical activity. From the standpoint of
the relationship of latent to manifest dream-
content, dreams can be divided into three
classes. We can, in the first place, dis-
tinguish those dreams which have a meaning
and are, at the same time, intelligible,
which allow us to penetrate into our
psychical life without further ado. Such
dreams are numerous; they are usually

21

22 ON DREAMS

short, and, as a general rule, do not seem
very noticeable, because everything remark-
able or exciting surprise is absent. Their
occurrence is, moreover, a strong argument
against the doctrine which derives the
dream from the isolated activity of certain
cortical elements. All signs of a lowered or
subdivided psychical activity are wanting.
Yet we never raise any obj ection to character-
ising them as dreams, nor do we confound
them with the products of our waking life.

A second group is formed by those dreams
which are indeed self-coherent and have a
distinct meaning, but appear strange be-
cause we are unable to reconcile their
meaning with our mental life. That is the
case when we dream, for instance, that some
dear relative has died of plague when we
know of no ground for expecting, appre-
hending, or assuming anything of the sort;
we can only ask ourself wonderingly:
'' What brought that into my head ?'* To
the third group those dreams belong which
are void of both meaning and intelligibility;

ON DREAMS 23

they are incoherent, complicated, and mean-
ingless. The overwhelming number of our
dreams partake of this character, and this
has given rise to the contemptuous attitude
towards dreams and the medical theory
of their limited psychical activity. It is
especially in the longer and more compli-
cated dream-plots that signs of incoherence
are seldom missing.

The contrast between manifest and latent
dream-content is clearly only of value for
the dreams of the second and more especi-
ally for those of the third class. Here are
problems which are only solved when the
manifest dream is replaced by its latent
content; it was an example of this kind, a
complicated and unintelligible dream, that
we subjected to analysis. Against our ex-
pectation we, however, struck upon reasons
which prevented a complete cognizance of
the latent dream thought. On the repe-
tition of this same experience we were
forced to the supposition that there is an
intimate bond, with laws of its own, between

24 ON DREAMS

the unintelligible and complicated nature of
the dream and the difficulties attending com-
munication of the thoughts connected with
the dream. Before investigating the nature
of this bond, it will be advantageous to turn
our attention to the more readily intelligible
dreams of the first class where, the manifest
and latent content being identical, the
dream work seems to be omitted.

The investigation of these dreams is also
advisable from another standpoint. The
dreams of children are of this nature; they
have a meaning, and are not bizarre. This,
by the way, is a further objection to reduc-
ing dreams to a dissociation of cerebral
activity in sleep, for why should such a
lowering of psychical functions belong to
the nature of sleep in adults, but not in
children ? We are, however, fully justified
in expecting that the explanation of psychi-
cal processes in children, essentially simpli-
fied as they may be, should serve as an
indispensable preparation towards the psy-
chology of the adult.

ON DREAMS 25

I shall therefore cite some examples of
dreams which I have gathered from chil-
dren. A girl of nineteen months was made
to go without food for a day because she
had been sick in the morning, and, accord-
ing to nurse, had made herself ill through
eating strawberries. During the night,
after her day of fasting, she was heard
calling out her name during sleep, and
adding : '' Tawherry^ eggs, pap. " She is
dreaming that she is eating, and selects
out of her menu exactly what she sup-
poses she will not get much of just now.

The same kind of dream about a for-
bidden dish was that of a little boy of
twenty-two months. The day before he
was told to offer his uncle a present of a
small basket of cherries, of which the child
was, of course, only allowed one to taste.
He woke up with the joyful news: *' Her-
mann eaten up all the cherries.'*

A girl of three and a half years had made
during the day a sea trip which was too
short for her, and she cried when she had

26 ON DREAMS

to get out of the boat. The next morning
her story was that during the night she had
been on the sea, thus continuing the inter-
rupted trip.

A boy of five and a half years was not at
all pleased with his party during a walk in
the Dachstein region. Whenever a new
peak came into sight he asked if that were
the Dachstein, and, finally, refused to
accompany the party to the waterfall. His
behaviour was ascribed to fatigue ; but a
better explanation was forthcoming when
the next morning he told his dream : he had
ascended the Dachstein. Obviously he ex-
pected the ascent of the Dachstein to be
the object of the excursion, and was vexed
by not getting a glimpse of the mountain.
The dream gave him what the day had
withheld. The dream of a girl of six was
similar; her father had cut short the walk
before reaching the promised objective on
account of the lateness of the hour. On
the way back she noticed a signpost giving
the name of another place for excursions;

ON DREAMS 27

her father promised to take her there also
some other day. She greeted her father
next day with the news that she had dreamt
that her father had been with her to both
places.

What is common in all these dreams is
obvious. They completely satisfy wishes
excited during the day which remain
unrealised. They are simply and undis-
guisedly realisations of wishes.

The following child -dream, not quite
understandable at first sight, is nothing
else than a wish realised. On account of
poliomyelitis a girl, not quite four years of
age, was brought from the country into
town, and remained over night with a
childless aunt in a big — for her, naturally,
huge — bed. The next morning she stated
that she had dreamt that the bed was much
too small for her, so that she could find no
place in it. To explain this dream as a
wish is easy when we remember that to be
'' big " is a frequently expressed wish of
all children. The bigness of the bed re-

28 ON DREAMS

minded Miss Little-Would-be-Big only too
forcibly of her smallness. This nasty situa-
tion became righted in her dream, and she
grew so big that the bed now became too
small for her.

Even when children's dreams are com-
plicated and polished, their comprehension
as a realisation of desire is fairly evident.
A boy of eight dreamt that he was being
driven with Achilles in a war-chariot, guided
by Diomedes. The day before he was
assiduously reading about great heroes. It
is easy to show that he took these heroes
as his models, and regretted that he was
not living in those days.

From this short collection a further char-
acteristic of the dreams of children is mani-
fest— their connection with the life of the day.
The desires which are realised in these
dreams are left over from the day or, as a
rule, the day previous, and the feeling has
become intently emphasised and fixed dur-
ing the day thoughts. Accidental and in-
different matters, or what must appear so

ON DREAMS 29

to the child, find no acceptance in the
contents of the dream.

Innumerable instances of such dreams of
the infantile type can be found among adults
also, but, as mentioned, these are mostly
exactly like the manifest content. Thus, a
random selection of persons will generally
respond to thirst at night-time with a dream
about drinking, thus striving to get rid of
the sensation and to let sleep continue.
Many persons frequently have these com-
forting dreams before waking, just when
they are called. They then dream that
they are already up, that they are washing,
or already in school, at the office, etc.,
where they ought to be at a given time.
The night before an intended journey one
not infrequently dreams that one has
already arrived at the destination; before
going to a play or to a party the dream not
infrequently anticipates, in impatience, as
it were, the expected pleasure. At other
times the dream expresses the realisation
of the desire somewhat indirectly; some

30 ON DREAMS

connection, some sequel must be known —
the first step towards recognising the desire.
Thus, when a husband related to me the
dream of his young wife, that her monthly
period had begun, I had to bethink myself
that the young wife would have expected a
pregnancy if the period had been absent.
The dream is then a sign of pregnancy. Its
meaning is that it shows the wish realised
that pregnancy should not occur just yet.
Under unusual and extreme circumstances,
these dreams of the infantile type become
very frequent. The leader of a polar ex-
pedition tells us, for instance, that during
the wintering amid the ice the crew, with
their monotonous diet and slight rations,
dreamt regularly, like children, of fine meals,
of mountains of tobacco, and of home.

It is not uncommon that out of some long,
complicated and intricate dream one speci-
ally lucid part stands out containing un-
mistakably the realisation of a desire, but
bound up with much unintelligible matter.
On more frequently analysing the seem-

ON DREAMS 31

ingly more transparent dreams of adults,
it is astonishing to discover that these are
rarely as simple as the dreams of children,
and that they cover another meaning be-
yond that of the realisation of a wish.

It would certainly be a simple and con-
venient solution of the riddle if the vv^ork of
analysis made it at all possible for us to
trace the meaningless and intricate dreams
of adults back to the infantile type, to the
realisation of some intensely experienced
desire of the day. But there is no warrant
for such an expectation. Their dreams are
generally full of the most indifferent and
bizarre matter, and no trace of the realisa-
tion of the wish is to be found in their
content.

Before leaving these infantile dreams,
which are obviously unrealised desires, we
must not fail to mention another chief char-
acteristic of dreams, one that has been long
noticed, and one which stands out most
clearly in this class. I can replace any of
these dreams by a phrase expressing a

32 ON DREAMS

desire. If the sea trip had only lasted
longer; if I were only washed and dressed; if
I had only been allowed to keep the cherries
instead of giving them to my uncle. But
the dream gives something more than the
choice, for here the desire is already realised ;
its realisation is real and actual. The
dream presentations consist chiefly, if not
wholly, of scenes and mainly of visual sense
images. Hence a kind of transformation
is not entirely absent in this class of dreams,
and this may be fairly designated as the
dream work. An idea merely existing in the
region of possibility is replaced by a vision
of its accomplishment.

IV.

We are compelled to assume that such
transformation of scene has also taken place
in intricate dreams, though we do not know
whether it has encountered any possible
desire. The dream instanced at the com-
mencement, which we analysed somewhat
thoroughly, did give us occasion in two
places to suspect something of the kind.
Analysis brought out that my wife was
occupied with others at table, and that I
did not like it; in the dream itself exactly
the opposite occurs, for the person who
replaces my wife gives me her undivided
attention. But can one wish for anything
pleasant er after a disagreeable incident than
that the exact contrary should have occur-
red, just as the dream has it ? The stinging
thought in the analysis, that I have never
had anything for nothing, is similarly con-

33 3

34 ON DREAMS

nected with the woman's remark in the
dream: '* You have always had such beauti-
ful eyes." Some portion of the opposition
between the latent and manifest content of
the dream must be therefore derived from
the realisation of a wish.

Another manifestation of the dream work
which all incoherent dreams have in com-
mon is still more noticeable. Choose any in-
stance, and compare the number of separate
elements in it, or the extent of the dream,
if written down, with the dream thoughts
yielded by analysis, and of which but a
trace can be refound in the dream itself.
There can be no doubt that the dream
working has resulted in an extraordinary
compression or condensation. It is not
at first easy to form an opinion as to the
extent of the condensation ; the more deeply
you go into the analysis, the more deeply
you are impressed by it. There will be
found no factor in the dream whence the
chains of associations do not lead in two or
more directions, no scene which has not

ON DREAMS 35

been pieced together out of two or more
impressions and events. For instance, I
once dreamt about a kind of swimming-bath
where the bathers suddenly separated in
all directions; at one place on the edge a
person stood bending towards one of the
bathers as if to drag him out. The scene
was a composite one, made up out of an
event that occurred at the time of puberty,
and of two pictures, one of which I had
seen just shortly before the dream. The
two pictures were The Surprise in the
Bath, from Schwind' s Cycle of the Melusine
(note the bathers suddenly separating), and
a picture of The Flood, by an Italian
master. The little incident was that I once
witnessed a lady, who had tarried in the
swimming-bath until the men's hour, being
helped out of the water by the swimming-
master. The scene in the dream which
was selected for analysis led to a whole group
of reminiscences, each one of which had
contributed to the dream content. First of
all came the little episode from the time of

36 ON DREAMS

my courting, of which I have already
spoken; the pressure of a hand under the
table gave rise in the dream to the *' under
the table/' which I had subsequently to
find a place for in my recollection. There
was, of course, at the time not a word about
'' undivided attention/' Analysis taught
me that this factor is the realisation of a
desire through its contradictory and re-
lated to the behaviour of my wife at the table
d'hote. An exactly similar and much more
important episode of our courtship, one
which separated us for an entire day, lies
hidden behind this recent recollection. The
intimacy, the hand resting upon the knee,
refers to a quite different connection and
to quite other persons. This element in
the dream becomes again the starting-
point of two distinct series of reminiscences,
and so on.

The stuff of the dream thoughts which
has been accumulated for the formation of
the dream scene must be naturally fit for
this application. There must be one or

ON DREAMS 37

more common factors. The dream work
proceeds like Francis Gallon with his
family photographs. The different ele-
ments are put one on top of the other ; what
is common to the composite picture stands
out clearly, the opposing details cancel each
other. This process of reproduction partly
explains the wavering statements, of a
peculiar vagueness, in so many elements of
the dream. For the interpretation of dreams
this rule holds good : When analysis discloses
uncertainty as to either — or read and, taking
each section of the apparent alternatives as
a separate outlet for a series of impressions.
When there is nothing in common be-
tween the dream thoughts, the dream work
takes the trouble to create a something, in
order to make a common presentation
feasible in the dream. The simplest way to
approximate two dream thoughts, which
have as yet nothing in common, consists in
making such a change in the actual ex-
pression of one idea as will meet a slight
responsive recasting in the form of the

38 ON DREAMS

other idea. The process is analogous to
that of rhyme^ when consonance suppHes the
desired common factor. A good deal of the
dream work consists in the creation of those
frequently very witty, but often exagger-
ated^ digressions. These vary from the
common presentation in the dream content
to dream thoughts which are as varied as
are the causes in form and essence which
give rise to them. In the analysis of our
example of a dream, I find a like case of the
transformation of a thought in order that
it might agree with another essentially
foreign one. In following out the analysis I
struck upon the thought: / should like to
have something for nothing. But this for-
mula is not serviceable to the dream. Hence
it is replaced by another one: ''I should
like to enjoy something free of cost."*
The word '* kost '' (taste), with its double

* "Ich möchte gerne etwas geniessen ohne
' Kosten ' zu haben." A pun upon the word
" kosten," which has two meanings — " taste "
and " cost." In " Die Traumdeutung, " third

ON DREAMS 39

meaning, is appropriate to a table d'hote;
it, moreover, is in place through the special
sense in the dream. At home if there is a
dish which the children decline, their mother
first tries gentle persuasion, with a '' Just
taste it." That the dream work should
unhesitatingly use the double meaning of
the word is certainly remarkable; ample
experience has shown, however, that the
occurrence is quite usual.

Through condensation of the dream cer-
tain constituent parts of its content are
explicable which are peculiar to the dream
life alone, and which are not found in the
waking state. Such are the composite
and mixed persons, the extraordinary mixed

edition, p. 71 footnote. Professor Freud remarks
that " the finest example of dream interpretation
left us by the ancients is based upon a pun "
(from "The Interpretation of Dreams," by
Artemidorus Daldianus). " Moreover, dreams are
so intimately bound up with language that
Ferenczi truly points out that every tongue has its
own language of dreams. A dream is as a rule un-
translatable into other languages." — Translator.

40 ON DREAMS

figures, creations comparable with the fan-
tastic animal compositions of Orientals; a
moment's thought and these are reduced to
unity, whilst the fancies of the dream are
ever formed anew in an inexhaustible pro-
fusion. Everyone knows such images in
his own dreams; manifold are their origins.
I can build up a person by borrowing one
feature from one person and one from
another, or by giving to the form of one the
name of another in my dream. I can also
visualise one person, but place him in a
position which has occurred to another.
There is a meaning in all these cases when
different persons are amalgamated into one
substitute. Such cases denote an '' and,''
a *'just like/' a comparison of the original
person from a certain point of view, a com-
parison which can be also realised in the
dream itself. As a rule, however, the
identity of the blended persons is only dis-
coverable by analysis, and is only indicated
in the dream content by the formation of
the '' combined " person.

ON DREAMS 41

The same diversity in their ways of for-
mation and the same rules for its solution
hold good also for the innumerable medley
of dream contents, examples of which I need
scarcely adduce. Their strangeness quite
disappears when we resolve not to place
them on a level with the objects of per-
ception as known to us when awake, but to
remember that they represent the art of
dream condensation by an exclusion of un-
necessary detail. Prominence is given to
the common character of the combination.
Analysis must also generally supply the
common features. The dream says simply :
All these things have an " x'' in common.
The decomposition of these mixed images
by analysis is often the quickest way to an
interpretation of the dream. Thus I once
dreamt that I was sitting with one of my
former university tutors on a bench, which
was undergoing a rapid continuous move-
ment amidst other benches. This was a
combination of lecture-room and moving
staircase. I will not pursue the further

42 ON DREAMS

result of the thought. Another time I was
sitting in a carriage, and on my lap an
object in shape like a top-hat, which, how-
ever, was made of transparent glass. The
scene at once brought to my mind the
proverb : ''He who keeps his hat in his
hand will travel safely through the land/'
By a slight turn the glass hat reminded me
of Auers light, and I knew that I was about
to invent something which was to make
me as rich and independent as his invention
had made my countr3^man, Dr. Auer, of
Welsbach; then I should be able to travel
instead of remaining in Vienna. In the
dream I was travelling with my invention,
with the, it is true, rather awkward glass
top-hat. The dream work is peculiarly
adept at representing two contradictory
conceptions by means of the same mixed
image. Thus, for instance, a woman dreamt
of herself carrying a tall flower-stalk, as in
the picture of the Annunciation (Chastity-
Mary is her own name), but the stalk was
bedecked with thick white blossoms resem-

ON DREAMS 43

bling camellias (contrast with chastity : La
dame aux Camelias) .

A great deal of what we have called
*' dream condensation " can be thus formu-
lated. Each one of the elements of the
dream content is over determined by the
matter of the dream thoughts ; it is not de-
rived from one element of these thoughts,
but from a whole series. These are not
necessarily interconnected in any way, but
may belong to the most diverse spheres of
thought. The dream element truly repre-
sents all this disparate matter in the dream
content. Analysis, moreover, discloses
another side of the relationship between
dream content and dream thoughts. Just
as one element of the dream leads to asso-
ciations with several dream thoughts, so, as
a rule, the one dream thought represents more
than one dream element. The threads of the
association do not simply converge from
the dream thoughts to the dream content,
but on the way they overlap and interweave
in every way.

44 ON DREAMS

Next to the transformation of one thought
in the scene (its '' dramatisation"), conden-
sation is the most important and most
characteristic feature of the dream work.
V/e have as yet no clue as to the motive
calHng for such compression of the content.

V.

In the complicated and intricate dreams
with which we are now concerned, conden-
sation and dramatisation do not wholly
account for the difference between dream
contents and dream thoughts. There is
evidence of a third factor, which deserves
careful consideration.

When I have arrived at an understanding
of the dream thoughts by my analysis I
notice, above all, that the matter of the
manifest is very different from that of the
latent dream content. That is, I admit,
only an apparent difference which vanishes
on closer investigation, for in the end I find
the whole dream content carried out in the
dream thoughts, nearly all the dream
thoughts again represented in the dream
content. Nevertheless, there does remain
a certain amount of difference.

The essential content which stood out

45

46 ON DREAMS

clearly and broadly in the dream must,
after analysis, rest satisfied with a very
subordinate role among the dream thoughts.
These very dream thoughts which, going by
my feelings, have a claim to the greatest
importance are either not present at all in
the dream content, or are represented by
some remote allusion in some obscure region
of the dream. I can thus describe these
phenomena: During the dream work the
psychical intensity of those thoughts and con-
ceptions to which it properly pertains flows
to others which, in my judgment, have no
claim to such emphasis. There is no other
process which contributes so much to con-
cealment of the dream's meaning and to
make the connection between the dream
content and dream ideas irrecognisable.
During this process, which I will call the
dream displacement, I notice also the psy-
chical intensity, significance, or emotional
nature of the thoughts become transposed
in sensory vividness. What was clearest
in the dream seems to me, without further

ON DREAMS 47

consideration^ the most important; but
often in some obscure element of the dream
I can recognise the most direct offspring of
the principal dream thought.

I could only designate this dream dis-
placement as the transvaluation of psychical
values. The phenomena will not have been
considered in all its bearings unless I add
that this displacement or transvaluation is
shared by different dreams in extremely
varying degrees. There are dreams which
take place almost without any displace-
ment. These have the same time, meaning,
and intelligibility as we found in the
dreams which recorded a desire. In other
dreams not a bit of the dream idea
has retained its own psychical value, or
everything essential in these dream ideas
has been replaced by unessentials, whilst
every kind of transition between these con-
ditions can be found. The more obscure
and intricate a dream is, the greater is the
part to be ascribed to the impetus of dis-
placement in its formation.

48 ON DREAMS

The example that we chose for analysis
shows, at least, this much of displacement
— that its content has a different centre of
interest from that of the dream ideas. In
the forefront of the dream content the main
scene appears as if a woman wished to
make advances to me; in the dream idea the
chief interest rests on the desire to enjoy
disinterested love which shall '' cost
nothing *'; this idea lies at the back of the
talk about the beautiful eyes and the far-
fetched allusion to '' spinach/'

If we abolish the dream displacement,
we attain through analysis quite certain
conclusions regarding two problems of the
dream which are most disputed — as to what
provokes a dream at all, and as to the con-
nection of the dream with our waking life.
There are dreams which at once expose
their links with the events of the day; in
others no trace of such a connection can be
found. By the aid of analysis it can be
shown that every dream, without any ex-
ception, is linked up with our impression of

ON DREAMS 49

the day, or perhaps it would be more correct
to say of the day previous to the dream.
The impressions whch have incited the
dream may be so important that we are not
surprised at our being occupied with them
whilst awake; in this case we are right in
saying that the dream carries on the chief
interest of our waking life. More usually,
however, when the dream contains any-
thing relating to the impressions of the day,
it is so trivial, unimportant, and so deserv-
ing of oblivion, that we can only recall it
with an effort. The dream content appears,
then, even when coherent and intelligible,
to be concerned with those indifferent
trifles of thought undeserving of our waking
interest. The depreciation of dreams is
largely due to the predominance of the in-
different and the worthless in their content.
Analysis destroys the appearance upon
which this derogatory judgment is based.
When the dream content discloses nothing
but some indifferent impression as insti-
gating the dream, analysis ever indicates

4

<j "

50 /yON DREAMS <

Lt event, which has been re-
placed by sofh<Q^jn^^i^(|i^^paf with which
it has entered into abundant associations.
Where the dream is concerned with uninter-
esting and unimportant conceptions, analy-
sis reveals the numerous associative paths
which connect the trivial with the momen-
tous in the psychical estimation of the indi-
vidual. It is only the action of displacement
if what is indifferent obtains recognition in
the dream content instead of those impressions
which are really the stimulus, or instead of
the things of real interest. In answering the
question as to what provokes the dream^ as
to the connection of the dream^ in the daily
troubles, we must say, in terms of the in-
sight given us by replacing the manifest
latent dream content : The dream does never
trouble itself about things which are not de-
serving of our concern during the day, and
trivialities which do not trouble us during
the day have no power to pursue its whilst
asleep.

What provoked the dream in the ex-

ON DREAMS 51

ample which we have analysed ? The
really unimportant event, that a friend in-
vited me to a free ride in his cab. The
table d'hote scene in the dream contains an
allusion to this indifferent motive, for in
conversation I had brought the taxi parallel
with the table d'hote. But I can indicate
the important event which has as its substi-
tute the trivial one. A few days before I
had disbursed a large sum of money for a
member of my family who is very dear to
me. Small wonder, says the dream thought,
if this person is grateful to me for this —
this love is not cost-free. But love that shall
cost nothing is one of the prime thoughts
of the dream. The fact that shortly
before this I had had several drives with
the relative in question puts the one drive
with my friend in a position to recall the
connection with the other person. The in-
different impression which, by such ramifica-
tions, provokes the dream is subservient to
another condition which is not true of the
real source of the dream — the impression

52 ON DREAMS

must be a recent one, everything arising
from the day of the dream.

I cannot leave the question of dream dis-
placement without the consideration of a
remarkable process in the formation of
dreams in which condensation and displace-
ment work together towards one end. In
condensation we have already considered
the case where two conceptions in the
dream having something in common, some
point of contact, are replaced in the dream
content by a mixed image, where the dis-
tinct germ corresponds to what is common,
and the indistinct secondary modifications
to what is distinctive. If displacement is
added to condensation, there is no forma-
tion of a mixed image, but a common mean
which bears the same relationship to the
individual elements as does the resultant
in the parallelogram of forces to its com-
ponents. In one of my dreams, for in-
stance, there is talk of an injection with
propyl. On first analysis I discovered an
indifferent but true incident where amyl

ON DREAMS 53

played a part as the excitant of the dream.
I cannot yet vindicate the exchange of
amyl for propyl. To the round of ideas of
the same dream, however, there belongs the
recollection of my first visit to Munich,
when the Propylcea struck me. The attend-
ant circumstances of the analysis render
it admissible that the influence of this
second group of conceptions caused the dis-
placement of amyl to propyl. Propyl is, so
to say, the mean idea between amyl and
propylcea ; it got into the dream as a kind
of compromise by simultaneous condensa-
tion and displacement.

The need of discovering some motive for
this bewildering work of the dream is even
more called for in the case of displacement
than in condensation.

VI.

Although the work of displacement must
be held mainly responsible if the dream
thoughts are not refound or recognised in
the dream content (unless the motive of the
changes be guessed), it is another and milder
kind of transformation which will be con-
sidered with the dream thoughts which
leads to the discovery of a new but readily
understood act of the dream work. The first
dream thoughts which are unravelled by
analysis frequently strike one by their un-
usual wording. They do not appear to be
expressed in the sober form which our
thinking prefers ; rather are they expressed
symbolically by allegories and metaphors
like the figurative language of the poets. It
is not difficult to find the motives for this
degree of constraint in the expression of
dream ideas. The dream content consists

54

ON DREAMS 55

chiefly of visual scenes; hence the dream
ideas must, in the first place, be prepared
to make use of these forms of presenta-
tion. Conceive that a political leader's
or a barrister's address had to be trans-
posed into pantomime, and it will be
easy to understand the transformations to
which the dream work is constrained by
regard for this dramatisation of the dream
content.

Around the psychical stuff of dream
thoughts there are ever found reminiscences
of impressions, not infrequently of early
childhood — scenes which, as a rule, have
been visually grasped. Whenever pos-
sible, this portion of the dream ideas exer-
cises a definite influence upon the modelling
of the dream content ; it works like a centre
of crystallisation, by attracting and re-
arranging the stuff of the dream thoughts.
The scene of the dream is not infrequently
nothing but a modified repetition, compli-
cated by interpolations of events that have
left such an impression ; the dream but very

56 ON DREAMS

seldom reproduces accurate and unmixed
reproductions of real scenes.

The dream content does not, however, con-
sist exclusively of scenes, but it also includes
scattered fragments of visual images, con-
versations, and even bits of unchanged
thoughts. It will be perhaps to the point
if we instance in the briefest way the means
of dramatisation which are at the disposal
of the dream work for the repetition of the
dream thoughts in the peculiar language of
the dream.

The dream thoughts which we learn from
the analysis exhibit themselves as a psy-
chical complex of the most complicated
superstructure. Their parts stand in the
most diverse relationship to each other;
they form backgrounds and foregrounds,
stipulations, digressions, illustrations, de-
monstrations, and protestations. It may
be said to be almost the rule that one train
of thought is followed by its contradictory.
No feature known to our reason whilst
awake is absent. If a dream is to grow out

ON DREAMS 57

of all this, the psychical matter is submitted
to a pressure which condenses it extremely,
to an inner shrinking and displacement,
creating at the same time fresh surfaces,
to a selective interweaving among the
constituents best adapted for the con-
struction of these scenes. Having regard
to the origin of this stuff, the term regression
can be fairly applied to this process. The
logical chains which hitherto held the
psychical stuff together become lost in this
transformation to the dream content. The
dream work takes on, as it were, only the
essential content of the dream thoughts for
elaboration. It is left to analysis to restore
the connection which the dream work has
destroyed.

The dream's means of expression must
therefore be regarded as meagre in com-
parison with those of our imagination,
though the dream does not renounce all
claims to the restitution of logical re-
lation to the dream thoughts. It rather
succeeds with tolerable frequency in re-

58 ON DREAMS

placing these by formal characters of
its own.

By reason of the undoubted connection
existing between all the parts of dream
thoughts, the dream is able to embody this
matter into a single scene. It upholds a
logical connection as approximation in time
and space, just as the painter, who groups
all the poets for his picture of Parnassus
who, though they have never been all to-
gether on a mountain peak, yet form ideally
a community. The dream continues this
method of presentation in individual
dreams, and often when it displays two ele-
ments close together in the dream content
it warrants some special inner connection
between what they represent in the dream
thoughts. It should be, moreover, ob-
served that all the dreams of one night
prove on analysis to originate from the
same sphere of thought.

The causal connection between two ideas
is either left without presentation, or re-
placed by two different long portions of

ON DREAMS 59

dreams one after the other. This presenta-
tion is frequently a reversed one, the be-
ginning of the dream being the deduction,
and its end the hypothesis. The direct
transformation of one thing into another in
the dream seems to serve the relationship
of cause and effect.

The dream never utters the alternative
*' either -or,'' but accepts both as having
equal rights in the same connection. When
*' either-or '' is used in the reproduction of
dreams, it is, as I have already mentioned,
to be replaced by '' and''

Conceptions which stand in opposition to
one another are preferably expressed in
dreams by the same element.* There

* It is worthy of remark that eminent philo-
logists maintain that the oldest languages used
the same word for expressing quite general anti-
theses. In C. Abel's essay, " Ueber den Gegen-
sinn der Urworter " (1884), the following examples
of such words in English are given: "gleam
— gloom"; "to lock — loch"; " down — The
Downs"; "to step — to stop." In his essay on
" The Origin of Language " (" Linguistic Essays,"

6o ON DREAMS

seems no *' not '* in dreams. Opposition
between two ideas, the relation of conver-
sion, is represented in dreams in a very
remarkable way. It is expressed by the
reversal of another part of the dream con-
tent just as if by way of appendix. We
shall later on deal with another form of
expressing disagreement. The common
dream sensation of movement checked serves
the purpose of representing disagreement of
impulses — a conflict of the will.

Only one of the logical relationships — that
of similarity, identity, agreement — is found
highly developed in the mechanism of

p. 240), Abel says: "When the Englishman says
' without,' is not his judgment based upon the
comparative juxtaposition of two opposites, ' with'
and ' out' ; ' with ' itself originally meant ' without,'
as may still be seen in ' withdraw.' ' Bid ' includes
the opposite sense of giving and of proffering "
(Abel, " The EngHsh Verbs of Command," " Lin-
guistic Essays," p. 104; see also Freud, " Ueber
den Gegensinn der Urworte" : Jahrbuch für Psycho-
analytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen,
Band ii., part i., p. 179). — Translator.

ON DREAMS 6i

dream formation. Dream work makes use
of these cases as a starting-point for conden-
sation, drawing together everything which
shows such agreement to a fresh unity.

These short, crude observations naturally
do not suffice as an estimate of the abund-
ance of the dream's formal means of pre-
senting the logical relationships of the
dream thoughts. In this respect, indi-
vidual dreams are worked up more nicely
or more carelessly, our text will have been
followed more or less closely, auxiliaries of
the dream work will have been taken more
or less into consideration. In the latter
case they appear obscure, intricate, inco-
herent. When the dream appears openly
absurd, when it contains an obvious para-
dox in its content, it is so of purpose.
Through its apparent disregard of all
logical claims, it expresses a part of the
intellectual content of the dream ideas.
Absurdity in the dream denotes disagree-
ment, scorn, disdain in the dream thoughts.
As this explanation is in entire disagreement

63 ON DREAMS

with the view that the dream owes its origin
to dissociated, uncritical cerebral activity,
I will emphasise my view by an example:

*' One of my acquaintances, Mr. M ,

has been attacked hy no less a person than
Goethe in an essay with, we all maintain,

unwarrantable violence. Mr. M has

naturally been ruined by this attack. He
complains very bitterly of this at a dinner-
party, but his respect for Goethe has not
diminished through this personal experience.
I now attempt to clear up the chronological
relations which strike me as improbable.
Goethe died in 1832. As his attack upon

Mr. M must, of course, have taken place

before, Mr. M must have been then a

very young man. It seems to me plausible
that he was eighteen. I am not certain, how-
ever, what year we are actually in, and the
whole calculation falls into obscurity. The
attack was, moreover, contained in Goethe s
well-known essay on ' Nature.' ''

The absurdity of the dream becomes the
more glaring when I state that Mr. M is

ON DREAMS 63

a young business man without any poetical
or literary interests. My analysis of the
dream will show what method there is in
this madness. The dream has derived its
material from three sources:

1. Mr. M , to whom I was introduced

at a dinner-party, begged me one day to ex-
amine his elder brother, who showed signs
of mental trouble. In conversation with
the patient, an unpleasant episode oc-
curred. Without the slightest occasion he
disclosed one of his brother's youthful esca-
pades. I had asked the patient the year of
his birth {year of death in dream), and led him
to various calculations which might show
up his want of memory.

2. A medical journal which displayed my
name among others on the cover had pub-
lished a ruinous review of a book by my

friend F of Berlin, from the pen of a

very juvenile reviewer. I communicated
with the editor, who, indeed, expressed his
regret, but would not promise any redress.
Thereupon I broke off my connection with

64 ON DREAMS

the paper; in my letter of resignation I ex-
pressed the hope that our personal relations
would not suffer from this. Here is the real
source of the dream. The derogatory re-
ception of my friend's work had made a deep
impression upon me. In my judgment, it
contained a fundamental biological dis-
covery which only now, several years later,
commences to find favour among the pro-
fessors.

3. A little while before, a patient gave
me the medical history of her brother, who,
exclaiming '' Nature, Nature !'' had gone
out of his mind. The doctors considered
that the exclamation arose from a study of
Goethe's beautiful essay, and indicated that
the patient had been overworking. I ex-
pressed the opinion that it seemed more
plausible to me that the exclamation
'' Nature T' was to be taken in that sexual
meaning known also to the less educated in
our country. It seemed to me that this
view had something in it, because the un-
fortunate youth afterwards mutilated his

ON DREAMS 65

genital organs. The patient was eighteen
years old when the attack occurred.

The first person in the dream-thoughts be-
hind the ego was my friend who had been so
scandalously treated. '' / now attempted to
clear up the chronological relations.'' My
friend's book deals with the chronological
relations of life, and, amongst other things,
correlates Goethe s duration of life with
a number of days in many ways im-
portant to biology. The ego is, however,
represented as a general paralytic (" / am
not certain what year we are actually in").
The dream exhibits my friend as behaving
like a general paralytic, and thus riots in
absurdity. But the dream thoughts run
ironically. *' Of course he is a madman, a
fool, and you are the genius who under-
stands all about it. But shouldn't it be the
other way round ?" This inversion obvi-
ously took place in the dream when Goethe
attacked the young man, which is absurd,
whilst anyone, however young, can to-day
easily attack the great Goethe.

5

66 ON DREAMS

I am prepared to maintain that no dream
is inspired by other than egoistic emotions.
The ego in the dream does notj indeed, re-
present only my friend, but stands for my-
self also. I identify myself with him be-
cause the fate of his discovery appears to
me typical of the acceptance of my own. If
I were to publish my own theory, which
gives sexuality predominance in the aeti-
ology of psycho-neurotic disorders (see the
allusion to the eighteen-year-old patient —
** Nature^ Nature !"), the same criticism
would be levelled at me, and it would even
now meet with the same contempt.

When I follow out the dream thoughts
closely, I ever find only scorn and contempt
as correlated with the dream's absurdity. It
is well known that the discovery of a
cracked sheep's skull on the Lido in Venice
gave Goethe the hint for the so-called ver-
tebral theory of the skull. My friend
plumes himself on having as a student
raised a hubbub for the resignation of an
aged professor who had done good work

ON DREAMS 67

(including some in this very subject of com-
parative anatomy), but who, on account
of decrepitude^ had become quite incapable of
teaching. The agitation my friend inspired
was so successful because in the German
Universities an age limit is not demanded
for academic work. Age is no protection
against folly. In the hospital here I had for
years the honour to serve under a chief who,
long fossilised, was for decades notoriously
feeble-minded, and was yet permitted to
continue in his responsible office. A trait,
after the manner of the find in the Lido,
forces itself upon me here. It was to this
man that some youthful colleagues in the
hospital adapted the then popular slang of
that day: '' No Goethe has written that,''
*' No Schiller composed that,'' etc.

VII .

We have not exhausted our valuation of
the dream work. In addition to condensa-
tion, displacement, and definite arrange-
ment of the psychical matter, we must
ascribe to it yet another activity — one
which is, indeed, not shared by every
dream. I shall not treat this position of
the dream work exhaustively; I will only
point out that the readiest way to arrive at
a conception of it is to take for granted,
probably unfairly, that it only subsequently
influences the dream content which has already
been built up. Its mode of action thus con-
sists in so co-ordinating the parts of the
dream that these coalesce to a coherent
whole, to a dream composition. The dream
gets a kind of fagade which, it is true, does
not conceal the whole of its content. There
is a sort of preliminary explanation to be

68

ON DREAMS 69

strengthened by interpolations and slight
alterations. Such elaboration of the dream
content must not be too pronounced; the
misconception of the dream thoughts to
which it gives rise is merely superficial, and
our first piece of work in analysing a dream
is to get rid of these early attempts at inter-
pretation.

The motives for this part of the dream
work are easily gauged. This final elabora-
tion of the dream is due to a regard for in-
telligibility— a fact at once betraying the
origin of an action which behaves towards
the actual dream content just as our normal
psychical action behaves towards some
proffered perception that is to our liking.
The dream content is thus secured under the
pretence of certain expectations, is per-
ceptually classified by the supposition of its
intelligibility, thereby risking its falsifica-
tion, whilst, in fact, the most extraordinary
misconceptions arise if the dream can be
correlated with nothing familiar. Every-
one is aware that we are unable to look at

70 ON DREAMS

any series of unfamiliar signs, or to listen
to a discussion of unknown words, without
at once making perpetual changes through
our regard for intelligibility , through our
falHng back upon what is familiar.

We can call those dreams properly made
up which are the result of an elaboration
in every way analogous to the psychical
action of our waking life. In other dreams
there is no such action ; not even an attempt
is made to bring about order and meaning.
We regard the dream as '* quite mad/'
because on awaking it is with this last-
named part of the dream work, the dream
elaboration, that we identify ourselves. So
far, however, as our analysis is concerned,
the dream, which resembles a medley of
disconnected fragments, is of as much value
as the one with a smooth and beautifully
polished surface. In the former case we
are spared, to some extent, the trouble of
breaking down the super-elaboration of the
dream content.

All the same, it would be an error to see

ON DREAMS 71

in the dream fagade nothing but the mis-
understood and somewhat arbitrary elabor-
ation of the dream carried out at the in-
stance of our psychical Hfe. Wishes and
phantasies are not infrequently employed in
the erection of this fagade, which were
already fashioned in the dream thoughts;
they are akin to those of our waking life —
'' day-dreams/' as they are very properly
called. These wishes and phantasies, which
analysis discloses in our dreams at night,
often present themselves as repetitions and
refashionings of the scenes of infancy.
Thus the dream fagade may show us directly
the true core of the dream, distorted through
admixture with other matter.

Beyond these four activities there is
nothing else to be discovered in the dream
work. If we keep closely to the definition
that dream work denotes the transference
of dream thoughts to dream content, we
are compelled to say that the dream work
is not creative; it develops no fancies of its
own, it judges nothing, decides nothing. It

72 ON DREAMS

does nothing but prepare the matter for
condensation and displacement, and refash-
ions it for dramatisation, to which must be
added the inconstant last-named mechanism
— that of explanatory elaboration. It is
true that a good deal is found in the dream
content which might be understood as the
result of another and more intellectual per-
formance; but analysis shows conclusively
every time that these intellectual operations
were already present in the dream thoughts^
and have only been taken over by the dream
content. A syllogism in the dream is
nothing other than the repetition of a syllo-
gism in the dream thoughts; it seems in-
offensive if it has been transferred to the
dream without alteration; it becomes
absurd if in the dream work it has been
transferred to other matter. A calculation
in the dream content simply means that
there was a calculation in the dream
thoughts; whilst this is always correct, the
calculation in the dream can furnish the
silliest results by the condensation of its

ON DREAMS 73

factors and the displacement of the same
operations to other things. Even speeches
which are found in the dream content are
not new compositions; they prove to be
pieced together out of speeches which have
been made or heard or read; the words are
faithfully copied, but the occasion of their
utterance is quite overlooked, and their
meaning is most violently changed.

It is, perhaps, not superfluous to support
these assertions by examples :

I. A seemingly inoffensive ^ well-made
dream of a patient. She was going to market
with her cook, who carried the basket. The
butcher said to her when she asked him for
something: '' That is all gone,'' and wished
to give her something else, remarking :
*' That's very good." She declines, and goes
to the greengrocer , who wants to sell her a
peculiar vegetable which is bound up in
bundles and of a black colour. She says :
'' I don't know that ; I won't take it."

The remark '' That is all gone '' arose
from the treatment. A few days before I

74 ON DREAMS

said myself to the patient that the earUest
reminiscences of childhood are all gone as
such, but are replaced by transferences and
dreams. Thus I am the butcher.

The second remark, '' / dont know that,''
arose in a very different connection. The
day before she had herself called out in
rebuke to the cook (who, moreover, also
appears in the dream) : '' Behave yo^trself
properly ; I don't know that " — that is, ''I
don't know this kind of behaviour; I won't
have it." The more harmless portion of
this speech was arrived at by a displacement
of the dream content; in the dream thoughts
only the other portion of the speech played
a part, because the dream work changed an
imaginary situation into utter irrecognisa-
bility and complete inoffensiveness (while in
a certain sense I behave in an unseemly way
to the lady) . The situation resulting in this
phantasy is, however, nothing but a new
edition of one that actually took place.

2. A dream apparently meaningless re-
lates to figures. *' She wants to pay some-

ON DREAMS 75

thing ; her daughter takes three florins sixty-
five kreuzers out of her purse ; hut she says :
' What are you doing ^ It only costs twenty-
one kreuzers.' "

The dreamer was a stranger who had
placed her child at school in Vienna, and
who was able to continue under my treat-
ment so long as her daughter remained at
Vienna. The day before the dream the
directress of the school had recommended
her to keep the child another year at school.
In this case she would have been able to
prolong her treatment by one year. The
figures in the dream become important if
it be remembered that time is money.
One year equals 365 days, or, expressed in
kreuzers, 365 kreuzers, which is three florins
sixty-five kreuzers. The twenty-one kreu-
zers correspond with the three weeks which
remained from the day of the dream to the
end of the school term, and thus to the end
of the treatment. It was obviously finan-
cial considerations which had moved the
lady to refuse the proposal of the directress,

76 ON DREAMS

and which were answerable for the triviaUty
of the amount in the dream.

3. A lady, young, but already ten years
married, heard that a friend of hers. Miss

Elise L , of about the same age, had

become engaged. This gave rise to the
following dream:

She was sitting with her husband in the
theatre ; the one side of the stalls was quite

empty. Her husband tells her, Elise L

and her fiance had intended coming, but could
only get some cheap seats, three for one florin
fifty kreuzers, and these they would not take.
In her opinion, that would not have mattered
very much.

The origin of the figures from the matter
of the dream thoughts and the changes the
figures underwent are of interest. Whence
came the one florin fifty kreuzers ? From
a trifling occurrence of the previous day.
Her sister-in-*law had received 150 florins
as a present from her husband, and had
quickly got rid of it by buying some orna-
ment. Note that 150 florins is one hundred

ON DREAMS ^^

times one florin fifty kreuzers. For the
three concerned with the tickets, the only

Hnk is that Ehse L is exactly three

months younger than the dreamer. The
scene in the dream is the repetition of a
little adventure for which she has often been
teased by her husband. She was once in
a great hurry to get tickets in time for a
piece, and when she came to the theatre
one side of the stalls was almost empty. It
was therefore quite unnecessary for her to
have been in such a hurry. Nor must we
overlook the absurdity of the dream that
two persons should take three tickets for
the theatre.

Now for the dream ideas. It was stupid
to have married so early; I need not have
been in so great a hurry. Elise L 's ex-
ample shows me that I should have been
able to get a husband later; indeed, one a
hundred times better if I had but waited. I
could have bought three such men with the
money (dowry).

VIII.

In the foregoing exposition we have now
learnt something of the dream work; we
must regard it as a quite special psychical
process, which, so far as we are aware, re-
sembles nothing else. To the dream work
has been transferred that bewilderment
which its product, the dream, has aroused
in us. In truth, the dream work is only the
first recognition of a group of psychical pro-
cesses to which must be referred the origin
of hysterical symptoms, the ideas of morbid
dread, obsession, and illusion. Condensa-
tion, and especially displacement, are never-
failing features in these other processes.
The regard for appearance remains, on the
other hand, peculiar to the dream work.
If this explanation brings the dream into
line with the formation of psychical disease,
it becomes the more important to fathom

78

ONyDREAMS 79

the essential conditions of processes like
dream building. It will be probably a sur-
prise to hear that neither the state of sleep
nor illness is among the indispensable con-
ditions. A whole number of phenomena of
the everyday life of healthy persons, f orget-
fulness, slips in speaking and in holding
things, together with a certain class of mis-
takes, are due to a psychical mechanism
analogous to that of the dream and the other
members of this group.

Displacement is the core of the problem,
and the most striking of all the dream per-
formances. A thorough investigation of
the subject shows that the essential condi-
tion of displacement is purely psychological ;
it is in the nature of a motive. We get on
the track by thrashing out experiences
which one cannot avoid in the analysis of
dreams. I had to break off the relations
of my dream thoughts in the analysis of my
dream on p. 11 because I found some ex-
periences which I do not wish strangers to
know, and which I could not relate without

8o ON DREAMS

serious damage to important considerations.
I added, it would be no use were I to select
another instead of that particular dream;
in every dream where the content is obscure
or intricate, I should hit upon dream
thoughts which call for secrecy. If, how-
ever, I continue the analysis for myself,
without regard to those others, for whom,
indeed, so personal an event as my dream
cannot matter, I arrive finally at ideas
which surprise me, which I have not known
to be mine, which not only appear foreign
to me, but which are unpleasant, and which
I would like to oppose vehemently, whilst
the chain of ideas running through the an-
alysis intrudes upon me inexorably. I can
only take these circumstances into account
by admitting that these thoughts are actu-
ally part of my psychical life, possessing
a certain psychical intensity or energy.
However, by virtue of a particular psycho-
logical condition, the thoughts could not he-
come conscious to me. I call this particular
condition '' Repression.'' It is therefore

ON DREAMS 8i

impossible for me not to recognise some
causal relationship between the obscurity
of the dream content and this state of re-
pression— this incapacity of consciousness.
Whence I conclude that the cause of the
obscurity is the desire to conceal these
thoughts. Thus I arrive at the conception
of the dream distortion as the deed of the
dream work, and of displacement serving to
disguise this object.

I will test this in my own dream, and ask
myself. What is the thought which, quite
innocuous in its distorted form, provokes
my liveliest opposition in its real form ? I
remember that the free drive reminded me
of the last expensive drive with a member
of my family, the interpretation of the
dream being: I should for once like to ex-
perience affection for which I should not
have to pay, and that shortly before the
dream I had to make a heavy disbursement
for this very person. In this connection,
I cannot get away from the thought that I
regret this disbursement. It is only when \

6

82 ON DREAMS

acknowledge this feeling that there is any
sense in my wishing in the dream for an
affection that should entail no outlay. And
yet I can state on my honour that I did
not hesitate for a moment when it became
necessary to expend that sum. The regret,
the counter-current, was unconscious to me.
Why it was unconscious is quite another
question which would lead us far away
from the answer which, though within my
knowledge, belongs elsewhere.

If I subject the dream of another person
instead of one of my own to analysis, the
result is the same; the motives for con-
vincing others is, however, changed. In
the dream of a healthy person the only way
for me to enable him to accept this re-
pressed idea is the coherence of the dream
thoughts. He is at liberty to reject this
explanation. But if we are dealing with a
person suffering from any neurosis — say
from hysteria — the recognition of these re-
pressed ideas is compulsory by reason of
their connection with the symptoms of his

ON DREAMS 83

illness and of the improvement resulting
from exchanging the symptoms for the re-
pressed ideas. Take the patient from whom
I got the last dream about the three tickets
for one florin fifty kreuzers. Analysis shows
that she does not think highly of her
husband, that she regrets having married
him, that she would be glad to change him
for someone else. It is true that she main-
tains that she loves her husband, that her
emotional life knows nothing about this
depreciation (a hundred times better !), but
all her symptoms lead to the same conclu-
sion as this dream. When her repressed
memories had rewakened a certain period
when she was conscious that she did not
love her husband, her symptoms disap-
peared, and therewith disappeared her re-
sistance to the interpretation of the dream.

IX.

This conception of repression once fixed, to-
gether with the distortion of the dream in
relation to repressed psychical matter, we
are in a position to give a general exposition
of the principal results which the analysis
of dreams supplies. We learnt that the
most intelHgible and meaningful dreams
are unrealised desires ; the desires they pic-
tured as realised are known to conscious-
ness, have been held over from the daytime,
and are of absorbing interest. The analysis
of obscure and intricate dreams discloses
something very similar; the dream scene
again pictures as realised some desire which
regularly proceeds from the dream ideas,
but the picture is unrecognisable, and is
only cleared up in the analysis. The desire
itself is either one repressed, foreign to
consciousness, or it is closely bound up with

84

ON DREAMS 85

repressed ideas. The formula for these
dreams may be thus stated: They are con-
cealed realisations of repressed desires. It is
interesting to note that they are right who
regard the dream as foretelHng the future.
Although the future which the dream shows
us is not that which will occur, but that which
we would like to occur. Folk psychology
proceeds here according to its wont; it
believes what it wishes to believe.

Dreams can be divided into three classes
according to their relation towards the
realisation of desire. Firstly come those
which exhibit a non-repressed, non-concealed
desire ; these are dreams of the infantile
type, becoming ever rarer among adults.
Secondly, dreams which express in veiled
form some repressed desire ; these constitute
by far the larger number of our dreams,
and they require analysis for their under-
standing. Thirdly, these dreams where
repression exists, but without or with but
slight concealment. These dreams are in-
variably accompanied by a feeling of dread

86 ON DREAMS

which brings the dream to an end. This
feehng of dread here replaces dream dis-
placement; I regarded the dream work as
having prevented this in the dream of the
second class. It is not very difficult to
prove that what is now present as intense
dread in the dream was once desire, and is
now secondary to the repression.

There are also definite dreams with a
painful content, without the presence of
any anxiety in the dream. These cannot be
reckoned among dreams of dread; they
have, however, always been used to prove
the unimportance and the psychical futility
of dreams. An analysis of such an example
will show that it belongs to our second class
of dreams — a perfectly concealed realisation
of repressed desires. Analysis will demon-
strate at the same time how excellently
adapted is the work of displacement to the
concealment of desires.

A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead
before her the only surviving child of her
sister amid the same surroundings as a fevv^
years before she saw the first child lying

ON DREAMS 87

dead. She was not sensible of any pain,
but naturally combated the view that the
scene represented a desire of hers. Nor
was that view necessary. Years ago it
was at the funeral of the child that she had
last seen and spoken to the man she loved.
Were the second child to die, she would be
sure to meet this man again in her sister's
house. She is longing to meet him, but
struggles against this feeling. The day of
the dream she had taken a ticket for a
lecture, which announced the presence of
the man she always loved. The dream is
simply a dream of impatience common to
those which happen before a journey,
theatre, or simply anticipated pleasures.
The longing is concealed by the shifting of
the scene to the occasion when any joyous
feeling were out of place, and yet where it
did once exist. Note, further, that the
emotional behaviour in the dream is
adapted, not to the displaced, but to the
real but suppressed dream ideas. The scene
anticipates the long - hoped - for meeting;
there is here no call for painful emotions.

There has hitherto been no occasion for
philosophers to bestir themselves with a
psychology of repression. We must be
allowed to construct some clear conception
as to the origin of dreams as the first steps
in this unknown territory. The scheme
which we have formulated not only from
a study of dreams is, it is true, already
somewhat complicated, but we cannot find
any simpler one that will suffice. We hold
that our psychical apparatus contains two
procedures for the construction of thoughts.
The second one has the advantage that its
products find an open path to consciousness,
whilst the activity of the first procedure is
unknown to itself, and can only arrive at
consciousness through the second one. At
the borderland of these two procedures,
where the first passes over into the second,

88

ON DREAMS 89

a censorship is established which only
passes what pleases it, keeping back every-
thing else. That which is rejected by the
censorship is, according to our definition,
in a state of repression. Under certain
conditions, one of which is the sleeping
state, the balance of power between the
two procedures is so changed that what is
repressed can no longer be kept back. In
the sleeping state this may possibly occur
through the negligence of the censor ; what
has been hitherto repressed will now succeed
in finding its way to consciousness. But
as the censorship is never absent, but
merely off guard, certain alterations must
be conceded so as to placate it. It is a
compromise which becomes conscious in
this case — a compromise between what one
procedure has in view and the demands of
the other. Repression, laxity of the censor,
compromise — this is the foundation for the
origin of many another psychological pro-
cess, just as it is for the dream. In such
compromises we can observe the processes

go ON DREAMS

of condensation, of displacement, the ac-
ceptance of superficial associations, which
we have found in the dream work.

It is not for us to deny the demonic
element which has played a part in con-
structing our explanation of dream work.
The impression left is that the formation
of obscure dreams proceeds as if a person
had something to say which must be dis-
agreeable for another person upon whom
he is dependent to hear. It is by the use
of this image that we figure to ourselves
the conception of the dream distortion and
of the censorship, and ventured to crystal-
lise our impression in a rather crude, but at
least definite, psychological theory. What-
ever explanation the future may offer of
these first and second procedures, we shall
expect a confirmation of our correlate that
the second procedure commands the en-
trance to consciousness, and can exclude
the first from consciousness.

Once the sleeping state overcome, the
censorship resumes complete sway, and is

ON DREAMS 91

now able to revoke that which was granted
in a moment of weakness. That the for-
getting of dreams explains this in part, at
least, we are convinced by our experience,
confirmed again and again. During the
relation of a dream, or during analysis of
one, it not infrequently happens that some
fragment of the dream is suddenly for-
gotten. This fragment so forgotten in-
variably contains the best and readiest
approach to an understanding of the dream.
Probably that is why it sinks into oblivion
— i.e., into a renewed suppression.

XL

Viewing the dream content as the repre-
sentation of a reahsed desire, and referring
its vagueness to the changes made by the
censor in the repressed matter, it is no longer
difficult to grasp the function of dreams.
In fundamental contrast with those saws
which assume that sleep is disturbed by
dreams, we hold the dream as the guardian
of sleep. So far as children's dreams are
concerned, our view should find ready
acceptance.

The sleeping state or the psychical change
to sleep, whatsoever it be, is brought about
by the child being sent to sleep or com-
pelled thereto by fatigue, only assisted by
the removal of all stimuli which might open
other objects to the psychical apparatus.
The means which serve to keep external
stimuli distant are known; but what are

92

ON DREAMS 93

the means we can employ to depress the
internal psychical stimuli which frustrate
sleep ? Look at a mother getting her child
to sleep. The child is full of beseeching;
he wants another kiss; he wants to play
yet awhile. His requirements are in part
met, in part drastically put off till the
following day. Clearly these desires and
needs, which agitate him, are hindrances to
sleep. Everyone knows the charming story
of the bad boy (Baldwin Groller' s) who
awoke at night bellowing out, '' / want the
rhinoceros'' A really good boy, instead of
bellowing, would have dreamt that he was
playing with the rhinoceros. Because the
dream which realises his desire is believed
during sleep, it removes the desire and
makes sleep possible. It cannot be denied
that this belief accords with the dream
image, because it is arrayed in the psychical
appearance of probability; the child is
without the capacity which it will acquire
later to distinguish hallucinations or phan-
tasies from reality.

94 ON DREAMS

The adult has learnt this differentiation ;
he has also learnt the futility of desire, and
by continuous practice manages to post-
pone his aspirations, until they can be
granted in some roundabout method by a
change in the external world. For this
reason it is rare for him to have his wishes
realised during sleep in the short psychical
way. It is even possible that this never
happens, and that everything which ap-
pears to us like a child's dream demands a
much more elaborate explanation. Thus it
is that for adults — for every sane person
without exception — a differentiation of the
psychical matter has been fashioned which
the child knew not. A psychical procedure
has been reached which, informed by the
experience of life, exercises with jealous
power a dominating and restraining influ-
ence upon psychical emotions; by its rela-
tion to consciousness, and by its spon-
taneous mobility, it is endowed with the
greatest means of psychical power. A
portion of the infantile emotions has been

ON DREAMS 95

withheld from this procedure as useless to
life, and all the thoughts which flow from
these are found in the state of repression.

Whilst the procedure in which we recog-
nise our normal ego reposes upon the desire
for sleep, it appears compelled by the
psycho-physiological conditions of sleep to
abandon some of the energy with which it
was wont during the day to keep down
what was repressed. This neglect is really
harmless; however much the emotions of
the child's spirit may be stirred, they find
the approach to consciousness rendered
difficult, and that to movement blocked in
consequence of the state of sleep. The
danger of their disturbing sleep must,
however, be avoided. Moreover, we must
admit that even in deep sleep some amount
of free attention is exerted as a protection
against sense-stimuli v/hich might, per-
chance, make an awakening seem wiser
than the continuance of sleep. Otherwise
we could not explain the fact of our being
always awakened by stimuli of certain

g6 ON DREAMS

quality. As the old physiologist Burdach
pointed out, the mother is awakened by
the whimpering of her child, the miller by
the cessation of his mill, most people by
gently calling out their names. This atten-
tion, thus on the alert, makes use of the in-
ternal stimuli arising from repressed de-
sires, and fuses them into the dream, which
as a compromise satisfies both procedures
at the same time. The dream creates a
form of psychical release for the wish which
is either suppressed or formed by the aid
of repression, inasmuch as it presents it as
realised. The other procedure is also satis-
fied, since the continuance of the sleep is
assured. Our ego here gladly behaves like
a child; it makes the dream pictures be-
lievable, saying, as it were, ^' Quite right,
but let me sleep." The contempt which,
once awakened, we bear the dream, and
which rests upon the absurdity and ap-
parent illogicality of the dream, is probably
nothing but the reasoning of our sleeping
ego on the feelings about what was re-

ON DREAMS 97

pressed; with greater right it should rest
upon the incompetency of this disturber of
our sleep. In sleep we are now and then
aware of this contempt ; the dream content
transcends the censorship rather too much,
we think, '' It's only a dream,'' and sleep
on.

It is no objection to this view if there are
border-lines for the dream where its func-
tion, to preserve sleep from interruption,
can no longer be maintained — as in the
dreams of impending dread. It is here
changed for another function — to suspend
the sleep at the proper time. It acts like
a conscientious night-watchman, who first
does his duty by quelling disturbances so
as not to waken the citizen, but equally
does his duty quite properly when he
awakens the street should the causes of the
trouble seem to him serious and himself
unable to cope with them alone.

This function of dreams becomes espe-
cially well marked when there arises some
incentive for the sense perception. That

7

98 ON DREAMS

the senses aroused during sleep influence
the dream is well known, and can be experi-
mentally verified; it is one of the certain
but much overestimated results of the
medical investigation of dreams. Hitherto
there has been an insoluble riddle con-
nected with this discovery. The stimulus
to the sense by which the investigator
affects the sleeper is not properly recognised
in the dream, but is intermingled with a
number of indefinite interpretations, whose
determination appears left to psychical
free-will. There is, of course, no such
psychical free-will. To an external sense-
stimulus the sleeper can react in many
ways. Either he awakens or he succeeds
in sleeping on. In the latter case he can
make use of the dream to dismiss the ex-
ternal stimulus, and this, again, in more
ways than one. For instance, he can stay
the stimulus by dreaming of a scene which
is absolutely intolerable to him. This was
the means used by one who was troubled
by a painful perineal abscess. He dreamt

ON DREAMS 99

that he was on horseback, and made use of
the poultice, which was intended to alleviate
his pain, as a saddle, and thus got away
from the cause of the trouble. Or, as is
more frequently the case, the external
stimulus undergoes a new rendering, which
leads him to connect it with a repressed
desire seeking its realisation, and robs him
of its reality, and is treated as if it were a
part of the psychical matter. Thus, some-
one dreamt that he had written a comedy
which embodied a definite motif ; it was
being performed; the first act was over
amid enthusiastic applause ; there was great
clapping. At this moment the dreamer
must have succeeded in prolonging his sleep
despite the disturbance, for when he woke
he no longer heard the noise ; he concluded
rightly that someone must have been beat-
ing a carpet or bed. The dreams which
come with a loud noise just before waking
have all attempted to cover the stimulus
to waking by some other explanation, and
thus to prolong the sleep for a little while.

XII.

Whosoever has firmly accepted this cen-
sorship as the chief motive for the distor-
tion of dreams will not be surprised to learn
as the result of dream interpretation that
most of the dreams of adults are traced by
analysis to erotic desires. This assertion
is not drawn from dreams obviously of a
sexual nature, which are known to all
dreamers from their own experience, and
are the only ones usually described as
'" sexual dreams." These dreams are ever
sufficiently mysterious by reason of the
choice of persons who are made the objects
of sex, the removal of all the barriers which
cry halt to the dreamer's sexual needs in
his waking state, the many strange re-
minders as to details of what are called
perversions. But analysis discovers that, in
many other dreams in whose manifest con-

100

ON DREAMS loi

tent nothing erotic can be found, the work
of interpretation shows them up as, in
reahty, reaHsation of sexual desires; whilst,
on the other hand, that much of the
thought-making when awake, the thoughts
saved us as surplus from the day only,
reaches presentation in dreams with the
help of repressed erotic desires.

Towards the explanation of this state-
ment, which is no theoretical postulate, it
must be remembered that no other class of
instincts has required so vast a suppression
at the behest of civilisation as the sexual,
whilst their mastery by the highest psych-
ical processes are in most persons soonest
of all relinquished. Since we have learnt
to understand infantile sexuality, often so
vague in its expression, so invariably over-
looked and misunderstood, we are justi-
fied in saying that nearly every civilised
person has retained at some point or other
the infantile type of sex life ; thus we
understand that repressed infantile sex
desires furnish the most frequent and most

102 ON DREAMS

powerful impulses for the formation of
dreams *

If the dream, which is the expression of
some erotic desire, succeeds in making its
manifest content appear innocently asexual,
it is only possible in one way. The matter
of these sexual presentations cannot be
exhibited as such, but must be replaced by
allusions, suggestions, and similar indirect
means ; differing from other cases of indirect
presentation, those used in dreams must
be deprived of direct understanding. The
means of presentation which answer these
requirements are commonly termed '' sym-
bols.'' A special interest has been directed
towards these, since it has been observed
that the dreamers of the same language use
the like symbols — indeed, that in certain
cases community of symbol is greater than
community of speech. Since the dreamers

* Freud, " Three Contributions to Sexual
Theory," translated by A. A. Brill (Journal of
Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Com-
pany, New York).

ON DREAMS 103

do not themselves know the meaning of
the symbols they use, it remains a puzzle
whence arises their relationship with what
they replace and denote. The fact itself
is undoubted, and becomes of importance
for the technique of the interpretation of
dreams, since by the aid of a knowledge of
this symbolism it is possible to understand
the meaning of the elements of a dream,
or parts of a dream, occasionally even the
whole dream itself, without having to ques-
tion the dreamer as to his own ideas. We
thus come near to the popular idea of an
interpretation of dreams, and, on the other
hand, possess again the technique of the
ancients, among whom the interpretation of
dreams was identical with their explanation
through symbolism.

Though the study of dream symbolism
is far removed from finality, we now possess
a series of general statements and of par-
ticular observations which are quite certain.
There are symbols which practically always
have the same meaning : Emperor and Em-

104 ON DREAMS

press (King and Queen) always mean the
parents; room, a woman,* and so on. The
sexes are represented by a great variety of
symbols, many of which would be at first
quite incomprehensible had not the clues
to the meaning been often obtained through
other channels.

There are symbols of universal circula-
tion, found in all dreamers, of one range of
speech and culture; there are others of the
narrowest individual significance which an
individual has built up out of his own
material. In the first class those can be
differentiated whose claim can be at once
recognised by the replacement of sexual
things in common speech (those, for in-
stance, arising from agriculture, as repro-
duction, seed) from others whose sexual

* The words from " and " to " channels " in the
next sentence is a short summary of the passage
in the original. As this book will be read by
other than professional people the passage has
not been translated, in deference to English
opinion. — Translator.

ON DREAMS 105

references appear to reach back to the
earUest times and to the obscurest depths
of our image-building. The power of build-
ing symbols in both these special forms of
symbols has not died out. Recently dis-
covered things, like the airship, are at once
brought into universal use as sex symbols.
It would be quite an error to suppose
that a profounder knowledge of dream
symbolism (the *' Language of Dreams ")
would make us independent of questioning
the dreamer regarding his impressions about
the dream, and would give us back the whole
technique of ancient dream interpreters.
Apart from individual symbols and the
variations in the use of what is general,
one never knows whether an element in the
dream is to be understood symbolically or
in its proper meaning; the whole content of
the dream is certainly not to be interpreted
symbolically. The knowledge of dream
symbols will only help us in understanding
portions of the dream content, and does not
render the use of the technical rules previ-

io6 ON DREAMS

ously given at all superfluous. But it must
be of the greatest service in interpreting a
dream just when the impressions of the
dreamer are withheld or are insufficient.

Dream symbolism proves also indispen-
sable for understanding the so-called
'' typical '' dreams and the dreams that
'' repeat themselves.'' If the value of the
symbolism of dreams has been so incom-
pletely set out in this brief portrayal, this
attempt will be corrected by reference to
a point of view which is of the highest im-
port in this connection. Dream symbolism
leads us far beyond the dream ; it does not
belong only to dreams, but is likewise
dominant in legend, myth, and saga, in wit
and in folklore. It compels us to pursue
the inner meaning of the dream in these
productions. But we must acknow^ledge
that symbolism is not a result of the dream
work, but is a peculiarity probably of our
unconscious thinking, which furnishes to
the dream work the matter for condensa-
tion, displacement, and dramatisation.

XIII.

I DISCLAIM all pretension to have thrown
light here upon all the problems of the
dream, or to have dealt convincingly with
everything here touched upon. If anyone
is interested in the whole of dream litera-
ture, I refer him to the works of Sante
de Sanctis (I sogni, Turin, 1899). For a
more complete investigation of my concep-
tion of the dream, my work should be con-
sulted: '' Die Traumdeutung," Leipzig and
Vienna, third edition, 191 1.* I will only
point out in what direction my exposition
on dream work should be followed up.

If I posit as the problem of dream inter-
pretation the replacement of the dream by
its latent ideas — that is, the resolution of

* Freud, "The Interpretation of Dreams," third
edition, translated by A. A. Brill. London:
George AHen and Company, Ltd.

107

io8 ON DREAMS

that which the dream work has woven —
I raise a series of new psychological prob-
lems which refer to the mechanism of this
dream work as well as to the nature and
the conditions of this so-called repression.
On the other hand, I claim the existence
of dream thoughts as a very valuable
foundation for psychical construction of the
highest order, provided with all the signs
of normal intellectual performance. This
matter is, however, removed from conscious-
ness until it is rendered in the distorted
form of the dream content. I am com-
pelled to believe that all persons have such
ideas, since nearly all, even the most
normal, can have dreams. To the uncon-
sciousness of dream ideas, or their relation-
ship to consciousness and to repression, are
linked questions of the greatest psycho-
logical importance. Their solution must
be postponed until the analysis of the
origin of other psychopathic growths, such
as the symptoms of hysteria and of obses-
sions, has been made clear.

LITERATURE

For a completer study of Dream Symbolism, con-
sult the work of Artemidorus Daldianus: The
Interpretation of Dreams. Rendered into EngHsh by
" R. Wr—i.e., Robert Wood. The fourth edition,
newly written. B. L., London, 1644. The last
edition was published in 1786.

Scherner, R. A. Das Leben des Traumes. Berlin,
1861.

Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams.

For the sjTmbolism of legend, myth, and saga com-
pared with dreams, see — '

Abraham, Karl. Traum und Mythus.

Rank, Otto. Der Mythus von der Geburt des
Helden.

Riklin, f. Wunscherfüllung und Symbolik im Mär-
chen.

These three works are pubHshed by Franz Deu ticke,
Vienna.
Enghsh translations are ready, or are in preparation.

109

no LITERATURE

Recent literature will be found in —

Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopatho-
logische Forschungen: Franz Deuticke.

Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psycho-
analyse; and Imago (both published by Hugo
Heller and Co., Vienna).

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

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